


Third One's The Charm

by dovingbird



Series: Expand My Heart [2]
Category: Game Grumps
Genre: BDSM, Choking, Gay Panic, M/M, Miscommunication, Multi, New Relationship, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Rough Sex, Very brief mention of other warnings in author's notes, argument
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2016-12-08
Packaged: 2018-09-07 08:29:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8790718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dovingbird/pseuds/dovingbird
Summary: “Do you feel like we did this right?” Brian asks softly.
“What do you mean?” Arin asks.
“The, just...us, the us, the relationship we’re in.” He reaches blindly over and Arin catches his hand, holds it on his thigh. “How we went about it. How we came out.”
“I think you’ve got something on your mind,” Arin says. He rubs his thumb over the back of Brian’s hand. “And I don’t think you’re saying it well.”
Brian snorts. “Thanks.” He lets his thoughts work a little bit longer, and then he kisses Arin’s knuckles and huffs. “Did you think about telling Danny about us before we started our thing?”
~~~
A filled commission. Brian and Arin are still feeling out this new relationship they've got going on, learning how to talk to each other and to the world around them about what they are. Unexpected consequences arise, mainly centered around jealousy, confusion, and a healthy dose of gay panic from a certain someone.





	

**Author's Note:**

> There is a very brief fleeting mention in a single paragraph of (all consensual) painplay, WAM, breathplay, electroplay, lactation play, enema use, watersports, and felching. Once again, very quick, just a sort of bored glossing over by a character, but yes, this way no one is shocked by it when it comes. <3

Brian never really thought about how pretty Arin would look when Brian shoved him on his bed for the first time, but damn, he should have. Brian lets himself take a second to drink Arin in – the hair feathered around his face, the hands already pulling into loose fists on the sheets, the way his chest is heaving like the last thing he knows how to do is breathe around Brian – and then Brian pounces.  
  
“Fuck,” Arin moans as Brian mouths at his neck. “Shit, dude, why’d we wait this long to come back to your place?”  
  
Brian hums as he lifts his head and reaches to push Arin’s hair behind his ear. “Well, statistically speaking, we’ve had strenuous deadlines at the office, followed by the convention that pretty much wiped out every bit of our libidos, followed by-”  
  
“Mmm, _fuck_ yeah, love it when you give me the logic.” Arin lets out another sharp moan, practically ripped straight from pornography, and Brian glances up to see how Arin’s barely holding back his laughter.  
  
Brian cups Arin’s face, turning him to look Brian in the eye. “Tell me, did you want that spanking now or later?”  
  
Arin laughs and pulls Brian down for a kiss.  
  
They haven’t had a lot of discussion about whatever the hell they’re doing right now. They’ve done a lot of sexting when their schedules didn’t line up, they’ve whispered some dirty things in each other’s ears at the office when no one else is around, and they’ve both admitted to each other that they have safe words even if they haven’t shared them, but actually going through with their innuendos? Actually admitting they’re wanting something hard and rough when they’ve barely had the chance to touch each other? Hasn’t happened.  
  
Brian has more experience with playing like this than he’s ever admitted to anyone in the office, so he goes out of his way to roll off of Arin, to get some space between them even when Arin whines and makes grabby hands for him. “Hey, hey, no, hold on,” Brian says sternly, catching Arin’s hand and lacing their fingers. “We’ve gotta talk about boundaries here.”  
  
“Cool,” Arin says. “Don’t have any.”  
  
Brian gives him a look.  
  
“What?” Arin laughs again. “Dude, Suzy and I go hard, you’re fine.”  
  
“You really expect me to believe you have no boundaries?”  
  
“I mean, none that I’ve found so far? If that makes sense?” Arin leans forward and kisses Brian’s knuckles. “Here, just try stuff. I’ll call ‘red’ if it’s too much.”  
  
Not exactly a flawless way to start off their first sexual encounter in a bed. Brian shakes his head before he scoots closer and lays a soft kiss on Arin’s mouth. “Do you like being pushed around?” Brian asks.  
  
“Yeah,” Arin murmurs, leaning for another kiss.  
  
Brian obliges him, but only the one. “What about pain, where’s your pain tolerance?”  
  
“Fucking love pain, dude.” Arin cranes his neck and pouts when Brian won’t give him what he’s so clearly begging for.  
  
“Scratching? Biting? Bruising?”  
  
“Yes, yes, fucking yes, just...Brian, please,” Arin whines.  
  
Brian’s not in the habit of rewarding someone who tries to accelerate important discussions like this. “Arin, this is important to discuss, listen to me.”  
  
“Okay! We’ve discussed it! Can I suck your dick now?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Brian.” Arin flops on his back and spreads his arms out wide, nearly hitting Brian in the face with one waving hand. “I’m serious. I like pain. I like being pushed around. I know how to use the stoplight system. Isn’t that enough for now?”  
  
Brian frowns at him, brow furrowed, pulling up every inch of the stern professor that he can manage. That lasts for around three seconds, he thinks, because that’s when Arin takes Brian’s hand and presses it against Arin’s cock through his jeans, and Brian flicks his eyes down as he shifts his hand and gives an appraising squeeze of Arin’s hardness. Arin gives a sound that’s more like a whimper than a moan, eyelashes fluttering, and Brian can’t help the surge of power that shoots through him as he crawls closer and drapes himself over Arin’s body.  
  
“We’re not finished,” Brian says as he thumbs over Arin’s bottom lip and watches it go slick with saliva. “We need to sit down, discuss our limits, discuss our kinks-”  
  
“You’re so fucking into this discussion thing,” Arin says, grinning. “Is that your kink? Talking about things like responsible adults?”  
  
“Yes,” Brian says just before he kisses Arin and slides his tongue into his mouth.  
  
Things go fast after that, all slick mouths and questing hands and not-so-quiet sounds getting swallowed up by the other. It comes in flashes – Arin begging for Brian to fuck him, Brian pulling Arin right where he wants him before he sinks two fingers inside of him, their sharp joined moans when Brian presses his cock inside of him for the first time. It’s incandescent.  
  
Brian comes fully back to himself when he’s mouthing at Arin’s neck while pressing his hips into the mattress and fucking him harder than he intended to. “You okay?”  
  
“Fuck yes,” Arin groans.  
  
Brian hums in response, feels how Arin’s neck moves under his lips. “God, I wanna bite you.”  
  
“Do it.”  
  
“You sure?”  
  
“Do it, do it right now.”  
  
There’s a million reasons why Brian shouldn’t. One, he knows Suzy gets jealous. Two, they have to go to the office tomorrow. Three, when Brian bites, he bites hard.  
  
But he’d be an asshole if he didn’t do what Arin so kindly requested.  
  
Arin cries out when Brian digs his teeth into his skin and sucks. Arin’s skin pillows under Brian’s fingers. He arches under Brian’s touch. And when Brian pulls back and sees the red mark already spreading over Arin’s neck, it only makes Brian want more.  
  
Not Brian’s proudest moment, but Brian’s never been a man of regrets, and he doesn’t intend to start now.  
  
  
~~  
  
  
_It really doesn’t look that bad,_ Arin said. _It’s probably gonna fade by tomorrow,_ Arin said. _I’ll get Suzy to help me cover it with makeup if it’s really bad,_ Arin said.  
  
Brian’s in the middle of drinking coffee when he realizes that Arin was in fact wrong about all of those things, and it’s a miracle that he doesn’t shower the fucking floor with dark roast when Arin strolls into the office and presents to the world the most massive chain of hickeys that Brian’s ever seen. It’s not quite a necklace – Brian wasn’t quite that distracted – but there’s a noticeable pattern trailing around Arin’s neck, from his Adam’s apple to where it disappears behind his soft curtain of hair.  
  
Arin snags a hair tie from Suzy and pulls his hair back into a bun and Brian sinks back into his chair a little more as he sees how the marks continue on.  
  
Holy shit.  
  
Everyone absently speaks up, greeting Arin and Suzy without looking at them, but Brian stares at Suzy, tries to ask her _why the hell did you let him leave the house like that?_ with his eyes alone. It doesn’t work. Suzy locks eyes with him, gives him a thin smile, then plops down at her desk.  
  
Silence. Absent typing. Brian puts his coffee aside because he knows for a fact that if he takes a drink, he’s going to choke on it. And then it happens.  
  
More specifically, Ross happens.  
  
“What the fuck!” Ross springs out of his chair and bounds across the room, eyes huge. “Holy shit, did you get mugged or something?”  
  
“What?” Arin asks. He grins with a furrowed brow, in that sort of _I have no idea what you’re talking about_ when he very obviously does kind of way.  
  
“This! Dude! You’re bruised to hell!” Ross gestures to Arin’s neck, then pauses as he tilts his head to the side and squints. Brian holds his breath. And then Ross begins to laugh, very low and warm. “Oh. Oh man, I see.”  
  
“What?” Arin slaps a hand over his neck like he was trying to kill an insect. “What do you see?” Arin asks.  
  
“Daaaaaang girl,” Ross says. He leans over and holds his hand in the air above Suzy. “C’mon, gimme some.”  
  
Suzy looks up at him and blinks, still wearing that thin smile. She doesn’t speak or go for the high five.  
  
“You’re not gonna leave me hanging, are you, Suze?”  
  
Suzy slowly turns her chair around and goes back to browsing Tumblr, chin in her hand.  
  
Ross scoffs and looks back at Arin. “Seriously, that’s a work of art. Kind of gross, though. Like, that probably involved a lot of spit-”  
  
“Some of us like spit,” Arin says helpfully.  
  
Ross makes a sound that’s probably meant to be a gag, but given that Ross has never gagged on anything in his life, Brian sort of doubts that he even knows how to make one.  
  
“Anyway, this wasn’t Suzy.” Arin puts his hand in his chin just like his wife, going through clickbait articles.  
  
Silence stretches out again, probably only broken by the muffled sound of Brian’s pounding heart. Barry turns his head and stares. Danny looks up from under his massive curtain of hair.  
  
“So you did get mugged?” Ross asks very slowly.  
  
“Nah.” Arin blinks a few times, chewing his bottom lip before he turns his head. “No, it was from someone else.”  
  
The floor practically drops out from under Brian. He sets his coffee down a little too hard and draws Danny’s eyes. Brian looks at him. They stare. And Danny’s eyes slowly widen.  
  
Fuck, okay, so maybe Brian forgot that his poker faces don’t work on Danny after everything they’ve been through. Fucking shit.  
  
“Dude,” Ross finally says, breaking the silence. “No offense, but I don’t wanna hear about your kinky threesomes.”  
  
“It wasn’t a threesome,” Arin says, laughing. “No, Suzy and I are polyamorous, dude. I’ve got another partner.”  
  
There’s a general clamor - “What?!” “Are you serious?!” “Damn!” - and Brian misses the cue, misses when he’s supposed to respond in turn. He stares at the back of Suzy’s head, looking for something to go on here so that he knows how to proceed, but she doesn’t look away from her screen until Barry asks “Suzy, you’re okay with this?”  
  
“Why?” Suzy asks, light and tinkly. “You interested in him too?”  
  
Barry turns bright red, eyes locked on Suzy’s, before he begins stammering helplessly, and Suzy flashes him a toothy smile that makes Barry look away and loudly slurp his soda.  
  
So this is how it’s happening. Arin and Suzy have decided to be out and proud around the office, at least. Brian feels a rush of adrenaline. He and Arin haven’t discussed this, haven’t discussed if Arin and Brian as a unit is something anyone else even needs to know, and Brian shifts his gaze to Arin, tries to burn a hole in his head. _Look at me,_ he thinks, _look at me, dammit._  
  
“Who is it?” Ross asks. “Do I know them?”  
  
Arin looks up at Ross, quirking a brow, wearing the smarmiest smirk Brian’s ever seen on him. “Dude, Ross, you think you know everybody in my life? C’mon.”  
  
“I’m one of your best friends!” Ross squeaks, voice cracking.  
  
“Uh-huh.” Arin shakes his head and kisses his teeth. “Don’t wanna know about my kinky threesomes? Then you don’t get to hear who I’m macking on.”  
  
“Dude,” Ross says mournfully.  
  
While Suzy snakes out of her chair and drapes over the back of Barry’s to gently tease him and Arin and Ross continue their little tennis back and forth, Brian runs a hand through his hair and investigates his coffee. He absolutely doesn’t need any more of this, not if Arin’s gonna be giving him a heart attack every five minutes. Brian’s way too fucking old for that sort of surprise.  
  
He meets Arin’s eyes again, communicates a very solid _we need to talk later_ before he gets up to put his coffee mug in the kitchen. It’s only when he passes Danny’s couch that he realizes Danny vanished minutes ago.  
  
Brian’s almost thankful for the Grumpcade that day. Arin, Suzy, Ross, and Barry pile into the studio to record, and Brian sits at his computer and scrolls absently through Twitter, trying to think of something to post on the NSP account. Only then does Danny come back, probably around a good hour since Arin and Suzy arrived in the first place.  
  
Brian and Danny lock eyes again. Brian waits for Danny to say something, anything.  
  
Danny looks away.  
  
Any other day, any other time, Brian would chase that like a hungry dog. He’d pile the irritating questions on top of Danny, make them just ridiculous enough to see Danny squirm and smile through deflecting them. But he can’t. Not right now.  
  
Brian can’t remember the last time he intentionally hid something from Danny.  
  
As Danny flops on his couch and pulls up his laptop, scrolling through something, Brian watches him. He rubs his chin and waits one more time for Danny to look up, to meet Brian’s eyes, to smile and tell him to stop being creepy. But he doesn’t. Danny determinedly avoids Brian.  
  
Brian would rather not think about Danny being angry at something that Brian did to make himself happy.  
  
~~  
  
Brian’s waiting outside the recording room when everyone emerges, talking and laughing. He puts his hand square on Arin’s chest and pushes him back inside, shutting the door behind him, ignoring Ross’s distant _”What?”_  
  
“Whoa, hey there, slow your roll,” Arin says with an easy grin, one of his hands catching Brian’s, lacing their fingers right out of view of the window. “Don’t have any lube on me right now, big daddy.”  
  
“Be quiet for a moment,” Brian says, soft but firm, and Arin’s eyes widen. “We need to talk about something.”  
  
“Hold on, just...” Arin darts his eyes around, then moves to check the audio. Brian looks at the camera that he knows isn’t recording, but feels the odd burn of paranoia inside of him. As Arin pulls up the dulcet tones of death metal on his phone and sets it near the perpetually recording microphone, Brian grabs a nearby discarded fries container and fixes it over the lens of the camera. Just in case. “Of course,” Arin says, laughing. “We get all this fancy automatically recording equipment, and then-”  
  
“I told you to be quiet,” Brian says. He sinks so naturally into his old tone, one he hasn’t used in a year now, and gets to watch Arin open his mouth, shut it, then sit down heavily on the couch with his eyes glued to Brian’s face. “Good,” Brian says as he walks past him and locks the door. “I want you to answer me concisely when I ask you questions, all right?”  
  
“Are you really pissed off?” Arin asks.  
  
Arin’s voice sounds soft and surprised, like he’d never imagine Brian getting angry about what happened today, and though Brian’s first reaction is to snap he reminds himself that he and Arin still haven’t had the boundaries talk, that Brian can’t treat him as if they have. Brian exhales sharply and looks at him. “I’m frustrated. But we’re going to talk about it.”  
  
The haze seems to clear right around then. Arin blinks a few more times and wrinkles his brow. “So are we talking about the-”  
  
“Arin, if you interrupt me one more time-”  
  
“Okay, first of all,” Arin snaps, “I didn’t fucking interrupt you, so don’t put that on me. I’ve got questions too, and I wanna ask them before you lay into me about something.”  
  
Brian approaches him and leans down, hands on his knees, eyes level with Arin’s. “I’ve asked you several times to be quiet,” Brian murmurs. “And you’re not doing that for me.”  
  
“I’m not your kid, and if you tell me to be quiet one more time, I’m leaving. We can have this discussion when you chilled out and let me talk like, y’know, an adult.”  
  
Silence. Brian feels the sting in his chest, feels the immediate reaction to punish Arin for his mouth, but he’s hit just as quickly with shame. He sighs heavily and comes back to his full height, pacing away from Arin. “You’re right,” Brian says. He laces his fingers behind the back of his neck and stares at the floor, watching how his feet swallow it up as he walks. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”  
  
He hears Arin shuffle behind him at the couch, nervous, fitful. “Like, where even did that come from, dude?”  
  
“It’s been a long time since I’ve had a partner,” Brian says dryly. “That’s a discussion for another time.”  
  
“Are you used to bossing people around, is that it?”  
  
Brian squeezes his eyes shut. “Arin.”  
  
“Because that’s not what I signed up for when I said I had a thing for you, man. If you’re gonna just, just try and steamroll over me or whatever, then-”  
  
“I really don’t wanna talk about this right now,” Brian murmurs, pained.  
  
“Okay, fine, if we’re not gonna talk about you wanting to control everything,” Arin says dryly, “then at least say something that convinces me that you’re not just a fucking asshole.”  
  
Brian whips around. “Listen, I know you and Suzy have played out some kinks and been really rough with each other, but I’ve done a little more than that, and I don’t want to discuss every intimate detail about my experiences in that community in the middle of our goddamn office.”  
  
Arin stares at him, eyes wide, mouth open. He blinks, closes his mouth, then opens it again. “That community? You mean the...the BD-”  
  
“Yes, Arin, that one,” Brian interrupts sharply. “Can we discuss that later? In private? When we don’t have your employees staring at us through the glass?”  
  
Arin glances over. Suzy’s disappeared, but they can still see Ross and Barry discussing something on the other side of the recording room’s glass. “Shit, dude,” Arin murmurs. “Yeah, sure.”  
  
“All right.”  
  
They’re quiet a bit longer, staring at their own hands, before Brian crosses the room and sits down on the couch arm with a heavy sigh. This isn’t how he wanted to have this discussion. He’s already fucked it up. He’s let years of instincts make him irrational. He’s let so many experiences overrule vanilla rules of respect. “I’m sorry,” Brian says again. “I started this discussion all wrong. Look, is it all right with you if I explain why I’m frustrated, and then we talk about it together?”  
  
Arin curls up on the couch in a little ball, arms around his plush calves, eyes focused on Brian. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”  
  
“Okay.” Brian studies his hands as he talks. “I was under the impression that you and Suzy were going to continue being closeted about being polyamorous. That was the last thing that you and me discussed. You wanted to stay quiet about it a bit more. And I was under the assumption that when the both of you were ready to come out, you would discuss it with me first so that I could be prepared.”  
  
More quiet. Arin breaks the silence. “Can I talk?”  
  
“Of course you can,” Brian says. He waves vaguely toward him. “This is an open discussion, Arin, please do.”  
  
Arin drums out a pattern on his skin, burning that nervous energy, before he inhales. “I didn’t think it would be all that...relevant to you, I guess.”  
  
Brian feels that sting again. He stares at Arin.  
  
“Like, Suzy is my wife. We’re gonna spend our whole lives together. Our experiences are always gonna overlap. So if I came out, it meant she had to come out too. We talked about it for a while and just...I don’t know, we really wanted to live honestly with everybody we’re close to, and we trust people to know now, so yeah, we...yeah.”  
  
Brian makes himself process what Arin said to the best of his ability before he speaks. “You didn’t think it was relevant to me?” Brian can’t help but breathe a pained laugh. “The man you slept with last night?”  
  
Arin rubs at his neck. He stares at the ground. “...dude, Brian, I don’t even know what the fuck we are,” Arin says with an answering laugh of his own.  
  
“I told you I don’t do one night stands,” Brian says.  
  
“Yeah, but you also didn’t ask me out or anything.” Arin spreads his arms wide. “You said you were interested in me, you kissed me, you blew me against your car, you fucked the shit out of me in your bed – and lemme just say that all of that was really fucking awesome, seriously, I’m into all of it – but you...you never gave this a title.”  
  
“This?”  
  
“You. Me. _Us._ ”  
  
Brian swallows hard. His heart is pounding too hard. He thinks he might even be sweating. God, what a discussion to have before noon. “I didn’t know if you wanted a title,” Brian says slowly. “You’ve always...I mean, fuck, Arin, you’ve always been so free, and just...I thought you wanted something casual. It made sense.”  
  
“You didn’t ask me,” Arin reminds Brian.  
  
“You didn’t tell me what you wanted,” Brian reminds him right back.  
  
Arin shrugs. “So we both fucked up.”  
  
“Yeah.” Brian slides onto the couch beside him, scooting until he can reach for Arin’s hand, where it rests on Arin’s knee. “Do you think we fucked it up too much?”  
  
“What?” Arin frowns at him. “Like, do I think we need to stop whatever this is?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Hell no.” Arin shakes his head so furiously that his bun almost falls out of his hair. “No way, dude, I’m, no, I’m still into you. I’m still into this. I just wanna know what it is.”  
  
Brian laces their fingers together and rubs his thumb over the back of Arin’s hand. “Will you tell me what you want it to be?”  
  
Arin’s cheeks flush slightly and he looks down, chuckling, wiggling his bare toes. “I, uh...I mean...do you wanna be my boyfriend?”  
  
“Boyfriend?” Brian doesn’t mean to laugh, but he can’t help it. “Christ, Arin, I’m over forty years old. I haven’t called somebody a _boyfriend_ in a decade.”  
  
“Well, too bad, old man,” Arin says, eyes sparkling. “I’m still young and spry, and I’m gonna make you feel young again too.”  
  
“Oh really?” Brian waggles his eyebrows just to hear Arin’s warm laugh again before he leans forward. “In that case, I think I like the idea of calling you my boyfriend.”  
  
“Then it’s settled,” Arin says. He reaches up and wraps a hand around the back of Brian’s neck. “Boyfriends.”  
  
Brian can’t keep himself from leaning forward and catching Arin’s lips in a soft kiss, gentle, warm, and everything he’s been dreaming about ever since Arin left his arms the night before. “I should still spank you for that heart attack you gave me this morning.”  
  
“Maybe after you explain your sordid little past,” Arin teases as he tugs at Brian’s shirt. They kiss twice more, drawing a hum from Arin that warms Brian more than any sweater could, before Arin touches their foreheads together. “I think Ross is about to piss his pants,” he whispers.  
  
Ah. Right. Glass. Glass that can be seen through. “Well.” Brian smiles at him. “I hope you’re ready to tell everybody, then.”  
  
“I don’t think I’ll have to,” Arin says almost cheerfully. “Have you seen Ross try to keep a secret before?”  
  
“Handy, that.”  
  
Arin squeezes Brian’s hand again. He comes to his feet and tugs Brian up too. “Shall we?” Arin asks.  
  
Brian shrugs. “Better late than never, right?”  
  
“Yeah, dude.”  
  
“Dude,” Brian repeats teasingly as they leave the studio. “Is that what you call all your boyfriends? What a romantic pet name.”  
  
“Are you trying to tell me that you’re a romantic?” Arin teases back.  
  
Brian lifts Arin’s hand and kisses his knuckles. It’s becoming one of his favorite places to leave affection. “Isn’t it romantic if a man buys you flowers addressed to his ‘sexy widdle baby?’”  
  
“Careful,” Arin says with a grin. “You don’t wanna make Danny jealous.”  
  
Arin and Brian make their way into the office proper and it’s thoroughly unsurprising that Ross stiffens a little once he sees them and points. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ross declares. “This is a prank, right?”  
  
Brian and Arin look at each other, brows furrowed. “Prank,” Arin says slowly. “Right, no, yeah, of course.”  
  
“You said you had boy problems!” Ross says, his voice cracking. He points right at Brian. “Do you know how much I could’ve helped you with this particular boy problem?”  
  
“Ross,” Brian drawls, “unless you know exactly how Arin likes his junk sucked, I don’t think you could’ve helped me at all.”  
  
Ross shudders. “God, please don’t ever say that ever again.”  
  
“Junk sucked,” Arin says primly.  
  
The office settles relatively quickly, though. There’s not a lot of questions and only Ross seems convinced that indeed this is some huge prank – the amount of times he tries to unearth a camera from tiny hiding spaces is hilarious – but there’s only one person missing.  
  
Brian leans into the back of Suzy’s chair. “Where’s Danny?”  
  
She peeks up at him, then looks away just as quickly. “Said he was taking lunch early.”  
  
Early. Danny likes food, but doesn’t necessarily like eating alone at restaurants. Brian wrinkles his brow. “Is he bringing something back to eat here?”  
  
“Doubt it.”  
  
“Huh.” Brian pushes away. “Well. Thanks.”  
  
“No problem.”  
  
Brian sinks into his desk chair again with a heavy sigh. It doesn’t necessarily bode well, he thinks, but…  
  
By the time Danny gets back from lunch, he’s chipper as anything, bright and buoyant, giving Brian a messy kiss on the cheek that nearly makes Brian fall out of his chair and congratulating him on corrupting Arin, so that’s gotta mean something good.  
  
“You still love me best, right?” Danny asks with twinkling eyes.  
  
“Danny,” Brian says, affronted, reaching for his hand and frowning. “I’ll  _always_ love you best.”  
  
Danny laughs. “Don’t be gross, dude,” he says, snatching his hand away, and that’s that. It’s normal. Nothing has changed.  
  
  
~~  
  
  
A week passes far faster than it should. The new relationship energy is flowing strong: thick endorphins in Brian’s veins that keep him on his witty A-game in recordings, incandescent inspiration that keeps him plucking out melodic lines at home, and new patience that helps him feel out his relationship without also isolating Arin from his wife. Twice this week he’s managed to bring Arin home with him, to press Arin into his bed and kiss him deeply and swallow down Arin’s moans just as easily as he can swallow down Arin’s cock, and that feels much more generous than Brian expected, if Suzy has as much of a jealous streak as she suggested.  
  
There’s something missing, though. Namely Brian’s best friend Danny, who seems to have vanished into the aether.  
  
Danny cancels plans. That’s a fact of life. Danny is scatterbrained and has trouble keeping track of all of his social engagements and duties. Danny’s known to go for days and days without slowing down, and sometimes the exhaustion hits him so sharply that he needs to cancel plans at the last minute just to sleep for twelve or fifteen hours so he can do it all again. That’s okay. Brian’s used to that.  
  
Brian’s not used to Danny canceling on him five times in one week.  
  
Brian’s first thought is that Danny’s sick or something. There’s always illnesses going around the office, and Danny’s got a particularly terrible immune system, probably from any number of weird drug combinations he indulged in back in the day. But no, every time Brian sees Danny at the office, he’s spry as anything. He looks ready to take on the world. So that’s not it.  
  
It takes a few days longer for Brian to realize that Danny is deliberately avoiding being alone with him, and that’s...that’s a little more insulting.  
  
Text messages get answered in a pretty perfunctory fashion. Questions about if anything’s wrong get ignored, then deflected hours later with some weird new meme or joke that Danny found online. And the two times that Brian tries to call Danny, it goes ignored.  
  
Brian sits at home alone, drink abandoned, staring at his phone as he tries to figure out if he should ask Arin about Danny. They’re both Danny’s best friends, after all, and Brian’s not jealous about that. Maybe he was when he was back in London, knowing that Arin and Danny were off doing such great things together, building a brand and a business, spending every waking hour together. Brian felt the weight of being replaced then. But not now. Arin can give Danny things as a friend that Brian can’t. They have a different dynamic. And that’s fine. But Brian still has an unspoken feeling that he should be able to handle this himself.  
  
Especially since it only started happening once Brian started dating Arin.  
  
Try as he might, Brian can’t shake the feeling that he made this happen. He and Danny have spent too much time together for years. They’ve shared beds in hotels. They’ve stayed overnight at each other’s places while they were time crunching for albums. They’ve been naked in front of each other when they were changing for NSP video shoots.  
  
And, no matter how much Brian tries to think back on it, he can’t remember ever telling Danny that Brian is gay.  
  
The reasons why are simple. At first, Brian wasn’t aggressively out and proud. He was getting his doctorate, had no time for dating in the first place, was trying to establish himself as an important academic figure that would never want for a job. There were other side projects then too, poetry projects, songwriting, artistic discussion, all of those on the edge of NSP. There was just no free time.  
  
Then there was the fact that Danny doesn’t drink. Brian had a number of other friends who he’d go out to bars with, friends who would wingman for Brian or that he’d wingman for, but Danny had no reason to go to a bar with Brian. He had no time to see Brian loose and curious, eyes on a man at the end of the bar, trying to figure out if he wanted to go flirt with him and get his number or not.  
  
And then eventually, there was the BDSM community. Most of Brian’s interaction with men happened with subs, and those weren’t exactly relationships that he could be open with in polite society or his career anyway. It was a quiet little secret, a little dirty, a little filthy, and Danny had no reason to know about it, much less anybody else.  
  
Brian hasn’t been closeted since his undergraduate years. But he met Danny quite a bit after that. And maybe Danny’s just now figuring it out and feels weird as hell about it.  
  
And how do you have that conversation with your boyfriend? How do you look him in the eye and say _I think our mutual best friend might have some latent homophobia and I think that’s why he’s avoiding me?_ It’s not an accusation that Brian takes lightly. And that means he has to take care of it himself.  
  
So he pushes his barely touched drink aside, pockets his cell phone, grabs his keys, and takes off driving.  
  
He doesn’t want to have this conversation. He really doesn’t. Danny’s not perfect, but he’s undoubtedly the best thing that’s ever happened to Brian, and Brian feels sick at the mere idea that he might have to cut that off because of something that Danny’s never disclosed about himself. But he might have to. And if he does, what will that do to the Grumps? How will that affect the office dynamic?  
  
It’s a long, painful thought process all the way to Danny and Barry’s apartment. And when he knocks, he’s as ready as he will be. He feels armored and strong and ready to tackle this theoretical discussion just like he’s tackled theoretical physics for years.  
  
The only problem is that Barry answers the door.  
  
“Oh,” Barry says, eyes widening, surprised. “Hey man, what’s up?”  
  
“Not much, Bear.” Brian comes up on his tiptoes. “Hey, I don’t wanna be rude, but can I come in? I need to talk to Danny.”  
  
Barry wrinkles his brow. “Dan’s, uh, he’s not here.”  
  
Brian drops back to his feet. He feels a rush of adrenaline paired with disappointment. It’s like a terrible blended wine. “Oh.” He frowns. “Do you know where he is?”  
  
“Yeah, he said he was gonna go see Suzy. I think he’s at their house.” Barry frowns too, mirroring Brian. “Is everything okay?”  
  
“Yeah,” Brian says absently. “Of course.”  
  
“’Cuz you, uh, kind of look like you’re gonna just punch him in the face when you see him.”  
  
“Don’t be silly, Barry,” Brian says, reaching out to squeeze his shoulders. “This is just how my face looks. Devilishly handsome and incredibly angry at all times.”  
  
Barry narrows his eyes slowly. “Is...am I supposed to agree or disagree?”  
  
“Both.” Brian pats his shoulders, then pulls back with a sigh. “Damn. Listen, I’m sorry to just show up and run, but I’ve gotta go talk to him and he won’t answer his phone for me, so-”  
  
“Yeah, that’s fine.” Barry rubs the back of his neck. “I...hope the talk goes well?”  
  
“Thanks,” Brian says. “Have a good night, Barry.”  
  
“You too!”  
  
As Brian drives to Suzy and Arin’s house, his mind rolls restlessly. Have Danny and Suzy ever been particularly close? He remembers Danny telling Brian about how Suzy helped him and Barry pick out furniture for their apartment when they first moved in, he remembers Danny getting protective about his nickname for Suzy that no one else was apparently allowed to use, but...he can’t recall them ever hanging out alone.  
  
He’s already feeling paranoid enough. He doesn’t want to entertain any more paranoia, not when he’s as logical, intelligent, and educated as he is, but he can’t deny the fact that he’s nervous about what he might find when his mind is already pressing together one homophobic best friend with one extremely jealous partner.  
  
He feels less prepared when he pulls into Arin and Suzy’s driveway and realizes he doesn’t have a plan.  
  
Okay, so. He’ll just. He’s going to go to the front door and knock. He’s going to ask to speak to Danny. And that’s gonna be that. There’s no reason he can’t have this conversation with him like an adult, just like Brian and Suzy had back when Arin and Brian had first started to dance around each other. Brian is over forty years old. Danny is an old man too. They can do this.  
  
Plan A gets destroyed when he opens his car door and sees Arin sitting on his front porch. “Hey!” Arin calls. “Long time no see, huh?”  
  
“Uh,” Brian replies intelligently.  
  
Arin comes down to tug Brian into a hug, then grins down at him. “Did you bring me something?” Arin teases. “Like, seeing you is great, but it’s not a surprise unless there’s a present.”  
  
“Yes,” Brian says slowly. “The present is my dick.”  
  
“Excellent.”  
  
“Is Danny here?” Brian asks, because he is the king of subtle subject changes.  
  
“Yeah.” Arin wrinkles his brow, smile fading. “He and Suzy are talking about something, I’unno, they wanted to be alone or whatever, it’s a pretty night, I was getting ready to sext you, you know the drill.” He holds up his phone and Brian catches a glimpse of an extremely obscene half-completed text. “Want the real thing?” Arin teases.  
  
Unbelievable, Brian barely gets out of his car and Arin’s already trying to fuck him. How the hell did he get so lucky? “Later,” Brian murmurs. He gives Arin’s ass a quick squeeze just to see Arin spasm and yelp, then moves past him. “Can I come inside, maybe?”  
  
“Yeah, of course.” Arin grabs his hand and gives it a quick squeeze back before he’s opening the door. “You want something to drink? I can make you some food if you want.”  
  
“Aren’t you just the cutest little homemaker.” The second the door is shut Brian nudges Arin against the nearest wall and kisses him. “Surprise me with soda.”  
  
Arin looks a little dazed from the sudden manhandling and kiss, but he nods. “Yeah, okay.” He grins at him again.  
  
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Brian says, already feeling a little acid on his tongue. “Gonna use your bathroom.”  
  
“Sure.” Arin gives him one, two, three more kisses, letting out a loud moan against Brian’s mouth just before he pulls back. “God, I love your fucking mouth,” he declares loudly over his shoulder. “It’s like a fucking fountain of jizz.”  
  
“That’s disgusting, but thank you,” Brian calls after him. And then he heads up the stairs for two reasons: one, the nice bathroom is up there that everyone likes to use, and two, if Danny and Suzy are clearly not talking in the living room, then they’ve gotta be talking in the bedroom. Brian has no qualms about interrupting them, even though Arin seems to. He’s here on a mission, after all. As nice as it would be to forget about it and fuck the shit out of Arin instead, he’s got something he has to do.  
  
The first thing to surprise him is that the bedroom door isn’t closed. It’s cracked, yes, but still opened just enough that he can hear the voices inside. Brian goes for it, hand out, preparing to push it open, then pauses when he hears Danny’s words. “Do you ever get jealous?”  
  
Brian freezes. He touches the doorframe and leans in a little more.  
  
“Of what?” Suzy asks. “Like, the answer is probably yes, but I like specifics.”  
  
“Uh...” Danny breathes a little laugh. “God, like...everything. Arin kissing other people. Arin not being here with you some nights. Arin smelling like people when he comes home.”  
  
“Yep, yep, and yep,” Suzy chirps. “Yeah, everything sucks sometimes.”  
  
“Shit.” Danny sighs, and the mattress squeaks where he’s probably leaning back, gangly limbs going every which way. “Why do you do it, then?” He pauses. “That’s probably super offensive to ask, isn’t it?”  
  
“Nah,” Suzy says. “Wouldn’t be the first time I heard it.” There’s a long moment of silence where Brian forgets how to breathe, but then Suzy goes on. “I’ve never been really good at hiding things about myself that are different,” she says. “Like, yeah, I do life differently than other people. I was a big anime nerd when I was in school. I was the weird model with my nose buried in manga during shoots. I dated the same guy all through school instead of dating around. Like, whatever, that’s not all like _super_ weird, but, y’know, people said stuff anyway, and just...I didn’t really care. ‘Cuz if I was trying to hide stuff about myself, I wasn’t happy.”  
  
Danny hums. “Veeeery familiar with that,” he says with a laugh. “Go on.”  
  
“I mean, that’s just it. You understand. You did the whole ‘I’m super weird’ thing for a while, even though no one else really got it. And now look at you! You’re still weird, but you’re doing it full time, and you’re happy.”  
  
“And you wanna do that too?”  
  
“Exactly.” Brian can hear the smile on Suzy’s voice. “My life isn’t always easy. There’s so much fucking stress. My head gets to me sometimes. My thyroid’s a piece of shit. I can’t always figure out how to balance my family and my friends and my channels and Grumps at the same time. But...like, being polyamorous, that’s a part of me. And just like my other passions, I wanna explore it, even when it’s hard.”  
  
“Huh.” Danny pauses. “How long do you think it’ll take before you stop getting jealous?”  
  
“Honestly? I don’t think I ever will.” Suzy laughs. “Jealousy is, like...it’s a response, Danny. It means something’s wrong. If I’m jealous, I’m probably feeling lonely or unappreciated. So I’ve gotta focus on that, not just be a bitch because I feel like it.”  
  
There’s silence, long enough that Brian thinks they might have seen him, panics, takes a step back, but then Danny’s speaking again. “I think I’m jealous.”  
  
The floor practically opens up under Brian. He leans back in, just about shoving his ear into the room. “Really?” Suzy asks.  
  
“Yeah.” Danny laughs, but it’s fake, tense, rough around the edges, and Brian feels his heart clench. “That’s weird, right? ‘Cuz I’m not dating them. I don’t have any reason to be like this.”  
  
“I mean, that’s not true at all, like...your two best friends are dating now. They might have less time for you.”  
  
“They didn’t tell me,” Danny interrupts. “Like...I found out when everybody else found out. Even though I’m their best friend. That’s…it’s so...”  
  
More quiet. The sheet shifts, and Brian wonders if Suzy reached for Danny’s hand. “It’s okay if you’re mad,” she murmurs. “It’s okay to be mad at them.”  
  
“I don’t wanna be mad at them,” Danny says softly, voice choked.  
  
“I know,” Suzy says. “But sometimes you have to be.”  
  
Brian closes his eyes and gently thuds his forehead against the doorframe. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.  
  
“I’m in a fucking band with them,” Danny says with another forced laugh. “We’ve fucking toured together. But I don’t get to find out they’re fucking? Christ.”  
  
Suzy hums in sympathy, soft, kind, present in every way.  
  
In every way that Brian should’ve been.  
  
He doesn’t need to be fucking listening to this. He already fucked up. And walking in when Danny sounds so oddly bereft, so strangely close to tears, that’s just going to embarrass him. Brian can wait until Danny’s about to leave. He can talk to him then.  
  
Brian heads back downstairs, chest aching, heart heavy. Arin meets him in the hallway with his soda, brow furrowed. “Hey,” Arin says. “Thought you might’ve fallen in.”  
  
“Nah,” Brian says. He takes the soda and stares at it, watching the bubbles gather on the surface. “You can’t get rid of me that easily,” he half-heartedly jokes.  
  
Arin doesn’t take the bait. “You look like shit.”  
  
“Thanks,” Brian says dryly.  
  
“The hell happened in the bathroom?”  
  
Brian snags Arin by the waistband of his shorts and tugs Arin behind him for a step or two, then waits for him on the couch in the living room. He tips his head back. When he feels Arin sink onto the couch beside him, Brian drops his voice. “Do you feel like we did this right?” Brian asks softly.  
  
“What do you mean?” Arin asks.  
  
“The, just...us, the us, the relationship we’re in.” He reaches blindly over and Arin catches his hand, holds it on his thigh. “How we went about it. How we came out.”  
  
“I think you’ve got something on your mind,” Arin says. He rubs his thumb over the back of Brian’s hand. “And I don’t think you’re saying it well.”  
  
Brian snorts. “Thanks.” He lets his thoughts work a little bit longer, and then he kisses Arin’s knuckles and huffs. “Did you think about telling Danny about us before we started our thing?”  
  
Arin’s quiet for a long moment. “Honestly? No. Like...I mean, our relationship is about us, dude. I love Danny to death, but he doesn’t need to know everything I do in my relationships, does he?”  
  
“I’m not saying he does,” Brian says, “but he’s a big part of our lives, and isn’t it weird that we didn’t talk to him about what we were feeling?”  
  
“We didn’t need that buffer.” Arin shrugs. “We talked to each other. That was it.”  
  
Brian looks at him. “You talked to Suzy too.”  
  
“I...yeah, okay, but that’s different,” Arin says. “Suzy’s my wife. She’s in every second of my life. She and I are still figuring out this polyamory thing out. We needed to figure it all out together.”  
  
Brian hums. He looks back at the ceiling again. His thoughts are buzzing a million different ways, pulling at the threads that tie them all together, and he doesn’t know how to herd them all into one area and address them all as a unit. “Danny is...” Brian considers. “He’s super important to me.”  
  
“He’s important to me too,” Arin says a little sharply.  
  
“Hey, I’m not saying he’s not.” Brian looks at him and squeezes Arin’s hand, and Arin settles a little further back into the couch, relaxing. “But he and I have been through a lot more than you and him have been through. We’ve got more experiences together.”  
  
Arin snorts. “You make it sound like you had a torrid love affair,” he says dryly.  
  
Brian barks a laugh, but his eyes go a little unfocused, distant on the wall. “...nah, not like that,” he murmurs.  
  
“Okay, now you’re _definitely_ not telling me everything,” Arin says with a laugh.  
  
“It’s nothing,” Brian says. “I’m the way I am, that’s all. I’m gay as fuck. I like having sex. I was attracted to just about every guy I ever met. Danny happens to be a guy and he happened to be in my life during a number of dry spells and did I check him out? Yeah. Did I fantasize? Yeah. But I didn’t make a move, no, you kidding me? That’d be ridiculous.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arin says dryly, “the dude that lived in a barrio with like eighty other guys at one time, hitting on him would definitely be completely unwarranted.”  
  
“That’s not the point.” Brian kisses his knuckles again because it always seems to make Arin relax a little more, shoulders setting, eyes softening on Brian’s face. “The point is Danny and I’ve been through a lot, and I feel...really weird about the fact that I didn’t discuss this with him. Especially when we all work together, make music together, tour together...”  
  
Arin stares at their joined hands. He sighs and leans over, head on Brian’s shoulder, his silky hair tickling Brian’s neck. “You think he’s mad?”  
  
“Oh, he’s mad. I overheard him and Suzy talking.”  
  
“That’s fucked up, Brian,” Arin says immediately, voice sharp. “Were you eavesdropping?”  
  
“I was gonna interrupt,” Brian says. He’s already got the guilt weighing on his chest. “I was worried, all right? Danny’s been dodging me for a week now. I needed to know why. I thought he was...look, I thought he was upset about us being together because we’re two dudes.”  
  
“You thought he was homophobic,” Arin says.  
  
“Oh, and you think that was super far off base?” Brian asks.  
  
“He lived with a bunch of dudes. He ran with a group of stoners for a while. And he’s best friends with me.” Arin scoffs. “Trust me, he’s been around a hell of a lot of gay shit. Or, y’know, bi shit, in my case, but still.”  
  
Brian rests his temple on the top of Arin’s head if only because his chest is still tight. “The way he used to react, though-”  
  
“Oh no,” Arin says dryly. “The new guy no homo’d on old episodes of Grumps when he was trying to form a professional identity and was worried about how he’d be seen by everybody. Oh God. What a homophobic piece of shit.”  
  
“I get your point,” Brian mutters.  
  
“Listen,” Arin says, squeezing Brian’s hand. “I think we did everything just fine. Like, it’s our relationship. It’s our lives. And yeah, Danny’s our best friend, but we didn’t owe him anything, okay? We don’t need to tell him every single time we take a shit. I don’t feel like we needed to ask his permission or anything, you know? But if you feel bad, that’s okay. We can apologize. We can talk to him and see if he has any questions, and uh, just, we can roll with it. We’ll get off to a good start.”  
  
Brian closes his eyes and sighs, feeling Arin’s hair tickle his face. “Okay. Yeah.” He pauses. “Do we do it now, do you think? Just go up there and interrupt and start the dog pile on the bed so we can all talk about this?”  
  
“What, do you want Suzy there too?”  
  
“I don’t know.” Brian finally lets the first taste of frustration kiss his tone. “This is...it’s a lot, okay, I don’t...I’ve never done this before.”  
  
“Hey, good news,” Arin says with a little grin. “Neither have I.”  
  
“How is that good news?” Brian asks suspiciously.  
  
“’Cuz it means we get to figure it out together.” Arin sounds so relaxed, like nothing could go wrong in this situation, like it’ll all trickle down into something good and perfect. “If we fuck it up, we fuck it up, but we’ll learn from it. We’ll work at it and keep moving forward.”  
  
Brian turns so he can stare at Arin. He blinks a few times. “...you are such a fucking Hufflepuff.”  
  
“Embarrassing, isn’t it?” Arin grins at him. “You’re the one dating me, dude.”  
  
“Disgusting,” Brian intones. He gets to his feet and tugs Arin behind him. “C’mon, the least we can do is see if Danny’s open to talking.”  
  
It feels a little like an ambush, the two of them climbing the stairs together, approaching the bedroom door. It’s open now, Suzy on her phone on the bed, the bathroom door closed, and Suzy looks up as they crest the stairs. She immediately wrinkles her brow. “Hey,” she says. “I didn’t know you were here, Brian.”  
  
“Just got here a little while ago.” He thumbs downstairs over his shoulder. “Through that way.”  
  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
“We need to talk to Danny,” Arin says. Not wasting any time now, thank God. “That okay?”  
  
Suzy looks between them a few times, then glances toward the bathroom. “I-I don’t know,” she says. She chews on her bottom lip. “You’ll have to ask if he’s okay with that. We’ve been talking about some stuff.”  
  
“I know,” Brian says. “I...maybe overheard a little bit.”  
  
Suzy flicks her eyes toward him, face immediately shifting into a scary glare. “Excuse me?”  
  
“Hey.” Brian gestures. “You left the door cracked. It was an accident, but yeah, I heard stuff, and I wanted to be honest about it.”  
  
“Then you know why he probably doesn’t wanna talk to you,” she says. There’s a taste of accusation on her tongue paired with her cold eyes, her pursed lips, but Brian welcomes it, honestly. It’s better than the neutral thin-lipped smile he’s been getting all week, where he had to fight to read her face.  
  
“Yes, I very much know,” Brian says. “Which is why I’m going to ask and make it his choice.” He drops his voice with a sigh. “Suzy, I appreciate you trying to keep him safe, but I’m not here to make his life a living hell. I promise. I wanna make things right.”  
  
She glares at him for a few seconds longer before she deflates a little, studying her nails. “I guess that makes sense,” she says quietly. “Did you wanna talk in the bedroom or…?”  
  
“I figure we just use the living room,” Arin says. “That way we’re not in your way if you needed to film anything or something.”  
  
“Thanks,” she says. She holds out a hand and Arin moves toward her, tugging Brian behind him. Brian doesn’t know if Arin intends to do that, keeping one hand on Brian, lacing fingers with Suzy with the other hand, but Arin leans down to give her a kiss, and Brian gets a fantastic view of how Suzy’s face finally softens, how Arin’s eyelashes flutter just from the taste of her.  
  
Fuck, they’re good together. Brian still wants to work every day to make sure that he doesn’t come between them, but it’s a damn relief to know that he’s not going to fuck up a relationship that sincere, that focused, that strong.  
  
“Love you,” Arin whispers against her lips.  
  
Suzy smiles, brushing her nose against Arin’s. “Love you too,” she murmurs back. Their affection is normally so understated in the office, softened so they can stay in a working mindset, and Brian feels both warmed and unsettled by seeing that little intimate peek into them. Suzy glances up and meets his eyes, still warm and soft, and she grins at him. “There’s cookies downstairs. They’re some of Danny’s favorites. They might help.”  
  
“Thank you,” Brian says sincerely. There’s a sense of relief in knowing that Suzy wants to help him patch this up with Danny, that she isn’t maliciously going out of her way to try and cause Brian pain. Yes, she’s jealous, and yes, she’s not gonna let it rule her. Brian breathes a soft sigh of relief as he and Arin move back into the hallway.  
  
They don’t have to wait much longer for Danny. The toilet flushes, he washes his hands, and then the door opens.  
  
“Hey,” Arin says with a grin.  
  
Danny and Brian don’t respond. They just stare at each other. As Danny flicks his eyes down to where Brian and Arin are holding hands, Brian drinks him in, from the dark undereye circles to the limp hair to the soft and worn clothes that he’s wearing. He looks like shit. Like he hasn’t slept all week.  
  
“Everything okay?” Danny finally asks, looking between them.  
  
Brian didn’t exactly plan to start this by looking like a very gay intervention, but hey, the scene’s set, he can’t turn back now. “Yeah,” Brian murmurs. “Just, y’know, thought you might be dead after not hearing from you for a week.”  
  
Danny immediately averts his eyes. Brian knows that normally right now it’d be easy for Danny to pull on a fake smile, give a little giggle, deflect the situation from himself entirely, but...he doesn’t look like he can do that right now. He just looks tired. He looks like if he puts any extra effort into his emotions then he’ll shrivel up and land in a pile of ashes, just waiting to be blown away by the wind. “I’ve been busy,” Danny finally says.  
  
“Doing…?” Brian asks.  
  
Dan meets his eyes again. Ah, there it is. The anger that Danny said he didn’t wanna feel. That he was trying to hold inside. It’s right there, right on the surface, and Brian feels pulled by it, because it means that Danny hasn’t given up on this friendship, that he’s still willing to put emotions toward it, to fight for it. “Didn’t know I had to check in with you like you were Avi,” Danny quips.  
  
“I mean, you  _are_ my sexy widdle baby, so-”  
  
“Stop,” Dan says. He scoffs and shoulders past them. “I’ve gotta get home.”  
  
“Hey, whoa, slow down,” Brian says. He grabs Danny’s wrist as he goes by, feels how it’s still damp under his fingers from where Danny just washed his hands, and Dan takes a deep breath before he looks at him. “I need to talk to you,” Brian says as sincerely as he can.  
  
Danny immediately stiffens. “Not today, Bri.”  
  
“Yes today, Danny.” Brian gives Arin a quick glance, squeezes his hand, then lets go so he can turn his full attention on Danny. “There’s a lot I need to apologize for, I think.”  
  
“You fuck,” Danny snaps, “you were listening, weren’t you?”  
  
“I was listening,” Brian says. “Do you expect anything less of me, really?”  
  
“I’d like some, just, some privacy,” Danny stammers. He doesn’t pull out of Brian’s grasp, but he starts moving toward the stairs anyway, and Brian follows along, feels Arin bring up the rear. “Like, if I wanna talk about how I’m pissed off at you to a neutral party or whatever, I’d like to do that without having to put up fences around the fucking bedroom.”  
  
“Neutral,” Arin says behind them with a laugh. “Uh-huh, yeah, Suzy’s real neutral.”  
  
“And you left the door open,” Brian reminds him. “Nice big crack for me to listen through.”  
  
“You’re both assholes.” But Danny still doesn’t pull away. He goes straight to the living room and plops down on the couch, but when Brian goes to sit next to him Danny drapes his long legs along the couch, all the way to the other end of it. Danny lifts his eyebrows in challenge. Brian stares.  
  
Brian still has a hold on Danny’s wrist, so it really shouldn’t be surprising that Brian lowers down to sit in Danny’s lap, and he finally drags the first laugh of the night out of him. “You son of a bitch,” Danny says through his giggles, shoving Brian straight off of him and onto the floor.  
  
“Oww!” Brian plays up the pain, reaching to rub his ass, making the most ridiculous face he can think of. “That hurt!”  
  
“Good.” Danny’s still tired, still angry, but his eyes are sparkling, and that means this is going to be okay, Brian thinks.  
  
Well, Brian’s already on the floor, and the mere thought of putting any distance between him and Danny sounds like the worst fucking idea he’s ever heard, so Brian rests his head back on the edge of the couch and looks up at Danny. Danny doesn’t react to the feel of Brian’s head on his thigh either. And Arin eventually settles down, perching on the edge of the coffee table, looking at them both tentatively.  
  
“So,” Arin finally says, low and warm. “Who wants to start?”  
  
“You mediating?” Danny asks with a weak smile.  
  
“Well, somebody’s got to,” Arin shoots back.  
  
“Oh, me, me, pick me,” Brian says with as much enthusiasm as he can gather. He twists so he can look Danny right in the eye, so he can see Danny’s face soften the longer he looks at Arin, then can see how it goes a little stiff when he looks at Brian. He looks like he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Interesting. “I don’t actually have anything to say, I just wanna look at you.”  
  
Danny laughs again. “Gross.” He pushes Brian’s head away from his leg, but doesn’t fight it when Brian’s head comes right back. “How long have you guys been...uh, together?”  
  
Brian considers. He looks at Arin. “Like, a few weeks?”  
  
“Yeah, not even a month.”  
  
“Unless you count the official day as the Boyfriend Talk day, whereupon it’s been a week, I think.”  
  
“Oh,” Danny says.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I just...” He chuckles. “I-I thought it might’ve been longer. Like, you’ve both been...weird, I guess? For a while?”  
  
“Weird how?” Brian prompts.  
  
“I-I dunno, like, looking at each other a little too long, or being real friendly while we were on tour, or...I dunno, forget it.”  
  
“You think we’d hide it that long?” Arin asks. He chuckles. “I mean, I know you’re a little clueless sometimes, dude, no offense, but not even you could’ve missed it if it had been going on that long.”  
  
“I mean, I missed it anyway, didn’t I?” Danny asks. “I didn’t know until you told everybody.”  
  
“You did know, though,” Brian reminds him. “You just said you saw that things were different. Give yourself some credit.”  
  
Danny grunts, clearly unsatisfied, and settles a little more into the couch, leaning his head back so he can stare up at the ceiling. It means Brian’s head is resting on his upper thigh now, and Danny’s hand is draped lightly behind it, so close that he could reach over and play with Brian’s hair. There’s the soft, familiar tingling in the base of Brian’s stomach, Brian’s hypersensitivity paired with his attraction toward Danny, and he moves around it as easily as he always has, barely acknowledging and glossing over it.  
  
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Brian says softly. He tips his head so he can see Danny upside down, can see how Danny looks at him before Danny’s lips twitch to hide his smile. “Seriously. If I knew you wanted to hold my hand while I talked about my super gay feelings-”  
  
“Stop,” Danny says with another soft, bubbly giggle, but...but it sounds different somehow. Danny doesn’t move away, but he does cover his face with a deep sigh, smiling mouth peeking out from his hands. His hands are shaking a little. Just the tiniest tremble.  
  
Brian narrows his eyes.  
  
“Same,” Arin says. “Y’know, like, I could’ve been talking about how much I wanted to suck Brian’s dick for weeks while we were filming. Could’ve asked for tips.”  
  
“Oh, yeah,” Danny says, dry as sandpaper. “I’ll give you all the dick sucking tips you could ever ask for. God knows I’ve got the experience.”  
  
“No,” Arin says with a laugh, “no, I meant just with Brian’s dick, like, you’ve seen it before, right?”  
  
“Stop,” Danny murmurs.  
  
“And that means that you’ve gotta, like, you know the shape, right? And could like-”  
  
“Stop!” Danny laughs again. “Oh my God, are you fucking serious right now?”  
  
“What?” Arin asks cheerfully, but there’s something about the way that Danny’s still trembling, his foot starting to shake restlessly on the couch, that has Brian kick Arin’s shoe to draw his attention. “...what?” Arin asks again, and Brian shakes his head.  
  
Telepathy would be really fucking great right now, especially since Brian’s dating someone who wouldn’t know subtlety if it ran him over on the freeway. How do you do that? How do you communicate in one word that something’s wrong?  
  
Danny sighs again – quiet, high-pitched, airy – and goes on. “I mean, at least we don’t ever have to fight over who shares beds anymore when we get hotel rooms, right? Like, if it’s just Starbomb? At least we know it’ll be you two bunking together and me all by my lonesome.”  
  
“We could switch sometimes,” Brian murmurs.  
  
The words hang in the air for a long moment. Danny drops his hand, looking at Brian with a wrinkled brow, trying to read him, and Brian stares right back. There’s something not being said, not by any of them, and it’s finally starting to take shape in Brian’s mind, slowly building. But then Danny laughs and says “Don’t be weird,” and gets to his feet. “Okay, I, whatever, I accept your apology. I was just...I’unno, I was mad, I guess. Felt like you were hiding something from me. Not cool.”  
  
“Never again,” Brian says solemnly.  
  
“Yeah, dude,” Arin says not-so-solemnly. “No more hiding. So hey, I’ve got this wart that’s right on the tip of my-”  
  
“Okay!” Danny chirrups. “That’s my cue to leave!” He backs toward the door and flashes them a smile. “See you guys tomorrow?”  
  
“If I don’t die from this wart first,” Arin says.  
  
Brian doesn’t say anything at first. He watches how Danny moves, watches how Danny lingers in the doorframe and stares at him, waiting. “Be safe,” Brian finally says, quiet and warm, and Danny stares for just a second longer before he turns down the hallway, before the front door opens and shuts firmly.  
  
Arin moves to drape over the couch, cupping Brian’s face. “I think that went well, don’t you?” he asks.  
  
“Yeah,” Brian says softly, because no, it didn’t, there’s a lot that’s still unsaid, there’s a lot of questions that Brian has, and there’s...there’s something off about Danny that he doesn’t understand right now, but he can’t put it into words at the moment. “It was okay.”  
  
Arin hums and reaches for Brian’s hand, giving it a tug, flashing him a smile. “Cuddles?”  
  
Well, who is he to resist that?  
  
They crawl onto the tiny couch together, sharing the same space, the same air, and Arin sighs as he presses against Brian so closely. They sink into soft kisses, gentle and familiar. It’s nice. It’s fucking incredible. And it’s just enough to get Brian’s mind moving again. He can come back to this whole thought experiment later, when he’s got more information under his belt. For now he can keep memorizing exactly how Arin likes to be kissed.  
  
  
~~  
  
  
The discussion of Danny goes by the wayside. Arin, for one, seems completely unconcerned, like he thinks it’s already been completely handled. Danny, for another, has started texting Brian and answering his phone calls like he did before, so whatever distance he was trying to set up is apparently gone.  
  
But things are still different. Danny’s pretty exclusively in Grump videos now, not ones that involve anyone else in the office, so Brian can’t see personally how Danny performs in there, but in the office itself he’s certainly gone quieter. He’s less likely to go along with jokes. Suzy’s got an unfortunate reputation of being a party pooper since she’s the only one who can keep them on a schedule, but Danny’s quickly sliding into that camp as well, which means that something still isn’t right.  
  
But no one else seems to notice. And Brian’s stirred up enough trouble as it is. So the best thing he can do, he thinks, is lie low, draw his own conclusions through observation, and bring up his hypothesis once he actually has evidence to back up his claims.  
  
Until then, there’s dates with Arin. The fervent sex has slowed down enough that Brian can sink into remembering what caught his eye about Arin in the first place, things like his smile, his laugh, the quick logical pathways he can draw to keep up with every discussion Brian starts. It means extremely gay butterflies in Brian’s stomach almost every night just from texting him alone, and nights like this one, when he gets to hold Arin in his lap while they watch a movie at Brian’s apartment, those practically make him feel like he’s gonna burst open, he’s so happy.  
  
“Did you ever do things like that?”  
  
“Hmm?” Brian moves from where he’d been distracted by nosing at the back of Arin’s neck, focusing instead on the screen. They’re watching a stereotypical crime drama movie, and the scene’s zoomed in on the dirty gangster getting ready to slice up the protagonist with a knife if he doesn’t cooperate. “Do what?”  
  
“That,” Arin says, pointing, an amused lilt to his voice. “Did you do any of that in your sordid past?”  
  
Brian blinks a few times. “What, use a knife?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You’re fucking with me,” Arin says, twisting around to flash Brian a grin and see his face.  
  
Brian shrugs. He’s been immersed in so many kinks that he forgets how they come across initially to someone who’s never experienced them before. “It wasn’t bad. A little messy, but not bad. Pretty good, actually.”  
  
“You enjoyed it?” Arin asks, his voice going a little high pitched. “Like, you enjoyed cutting somebody?”  
  
“Yeah.” He shrugs again. “It wasn’t a big deal. They wanted to push their limits. I was happy to help.”  
  
“Unbelievable.” Arin wiggles a little more into his arms, like he’s relying on the buffer of Brian’s arms to have this conversation, and that’s fine. Brian anticipated this coming up. He just thought it’d be sooner rather than later. “What else did you do?”  
  
Brian could make an entire wallpaper set of index cards of ‘what he’s done.’ “A lot,” Brian simply says. “Why?”  
  
“Just curious.” There’s a pause as they go back to the movie, but Brian doesn’t even bother paying attention. His suspicions are confirmed less than a minute later when Arin speaks again. “Like, what sort of stuff?”  
  
“Many things,” Brian says patiently, “few of which are even remotely related. You’d have to get more specific.”  
  
More quiet. More pretending to watch the movie. More patience when Arin opens his mouth. “Have you, like, ever choked somebody?”  
  
Brian smiles. It was the first kink he played with way back in college, when he had no idea that the BDSM community existed or that there was a treasure trove of new and interesting things to play with. It feels practically vanilla to him after all these years. “Yes.”  
  
“Dude,” Arin says. He sounds fervent, maybe even excited, and Brian files that away for later when they’ve finally had a proper kink discussion. “And, uh, like...did you tie people up and-”  
  
“I’ve tied many people up,” Brian says in the driest voice he has. “I’ve choked a lot of people. I’ve hurt them. I’ve covered them in cherry pie. I’ve forcibly held them under water. I’ve shocked them. I’ve forced them to lactate. I’ve given many enemas. I’ve made people pee on themselves. I’ve eaten cum out of many, many assholes. Yes, Arin, I’ve done things.”  
  
Arin stares at him with wide eyes. They look almost starry, like Arin is discovering a whole new world, and Brian can’t help but chuckle at that expression. Yes, he knows that feeling well, Arin, welcome to a whole new world of confusion and shame. “Jesus,” Arin finally whispers. He tucks his forehead into Brian’s neck and exhales a little shakily. “And with, like, just your partners, or…?”  
  
Brian keeps his hands still where he’s holding Arin. He’s not going to deny that just Arin’s reaction to this alone, clear curiosity, is enough to make Brian start getting hard, but he’s also not going to derail the conversation or make Arin feel obliged to do anything sexual simply due to the nature of the conversation. So instead he shrugs again. “I went to play parties,” he says. “Played with a lot of strangers. Some of them I never saw again. Some of them I saw at every party. But I have had a few designated subs in my time, yes.”  
  
“Wow,” Arin murmurs. “That’s...that doesn’t even seem real, man, that’s like, that’s stuff you just read about online or whatever.”  
  
“Nope,” Brian says. “Very real. Very lasting experiences. I’ve sort of pulled away from the scene in the past year or so, though.” He snorts. “All I need is some fan seeing me at one of those parties. Can you imagine? One picture of me with my fist in somebody’s asshole and my job’s over.”  
  
Arin laughs. “I wouldn’t fire you over that, dude.”  
  
“Hey, you never know.”  
  
They go quiet again, Brian’s hands still around Arin’s waist, but that’s when Arin’s hands predictably start to wander. Brian’s eyes go a little unfocused as Arin presses his mouth to Brian’s neck, nibbling at his skin, making Brian suck in a sharp, long breath.  
  
The remote’s on the coffee table. Brian could fumble forward for it, but there’s something amusing about the soundtrack to Arin’s gentle ministrations being people screaming and guns going off in every which direction. Arin’s focus isn’t shaken by it, and Brian remembers for a brief moment how thrilled Arin was by their first sexual encounter, out of doors where neither of them could see if anyone was approaching, going hard and fast and frantic so they wouldn’t be discovered. He wonders absently to the tune of Arin’s soft sighs against Brian’s skin if Arin would want to play with that further, if he’d thrive on getting off in public. If he’d thrive on getting off in a room full of strangers.  
  
Brian eases his fingers into Arin’s hair as Arin starts using his teeth a little more intently on Brian’s neck. He squeezes, feeling the silky strands whisper against his rough fingers, and Arin makes a soft sound. “What do you want?” Brian asks quietly.  
  
Arin takes in a sharp breath and sinks his teeth in, sucking a mark into Brian’s skin, sending trickles of aching pleasure through every vein. “You really wanna know?” Arin asks in a rough voice when he pulls back.  
  
“No,” Brian murmurs dryly. “I was only asking to hear myself talk.”  
  
“Oh, well then,” Arin murmurs back. He starts to pull away and Brian grabs him by the waist, pulls him back in hard enough that Arin loses his balance with a laugh, one that disappears as Brian teases a hand slowly down Arin’s chest to the hem of his shirt.  
  
“Yes, I wanna know,” Brian breathes as he steals a kiss from Arin and traces a pattern near Arin’s waistband. “What do you want, Arin?”  
  
Arin swallows hard, his adam’s apple bobbing, but he draws up his courage quickly enough. “I’ve never been choked before.”  
  
Brian grins, sharp and pointy. After all that talk that Arin did about him and Suzy going rough, huh? He’s struck with an intense curiosity about what they’ve been up to that qualifies as ‘rough.’ “Would you like for me to choke you?”  
  
“Yeah.” Arin presses against him and squeezes handfuls of Brian’s shirt. “That’d, yeah, that’d be cool.”  
  
“Cool indeed.”  
  
Brian considers pressing Arin into the couch, squeezing the air out of him with Brian’s body alone, but he doesn’t want Arin to feel trapped if he suddenly decides this isn’t what he wants to play with. He situates Arin in his lap just so, Arin’s neck right at the level of Brian’s eyes, and Brian traces his gaze over it. The marks from his teeth took so long to fade that first week. He wonders if he’ll leave marks shaped like fingers today, if they’ll take even longer to disappear. “People frequently play with this in a sexual context,” Brian says. He doesn’t mean to don his teacher voice, but here he is, giving a lecture as he touches a hand to Arin’s neck. “But I prefer trying this for the first time without sexual contact being involved.”  
  
Arin immediately pouts. “But I really want your dick, dude.”  
  
“My dick will be there when we’re done,” Brian says, fighting a smile back. “Right now I want you fully in charge of your faculties without distraction.”  
  
Arin huffs. He gets a little more situated, hands resting on Brian’s shoulders, thighs squeezing around his hips. “You’re no fun.”  
  
“I hate fun,” Brian says dryly. “I’m going to start by squeezing the sides of your throat with my fingers.” He gives a very small amount of pressure in demonstration. “This won’t fully cut off your air, but will help you get adjusted to the sensation.”  
  
“Is there going to be a test afterward?”  
  
“Absolutely.” Brian rests his other hand on Arin’s hip to keep him supported. “There is nothing more erotic than Scantrons.” He meets Arin’s eyes and quirks a brow. “I won’t squeeze hard enough to restrict your ability to speak, so if you need to stop before I do so, just tell me. Are you ready?”  
  
Arin takes a moment to center himself, drawing in a deep breath. “Yeah.”  
  
“All right, here we go.” Brian slowly applies pressure, feeling the muscles stand firmly against his touch. He watches Arin’s face as Arin exhales, how Arin blinks. He knows how it goes. Pressure as light as this doesn’t interfere so strongly with exhaling. But then Arin starts breathing in again and his brows knit. There’s the rough, audible whistle that Arin might not even realize he’s making. Brian feels Arin’s heartbeat pick up under his touch, thick and pulsing, and he lets Arin get a slow, full breath of air before he lets off slowly.  
  
Arin lets it all out in a rush, then inhales sharply again, reaching up to touch his throat. “Oh.”  
  
“You okay?” Brian asks.  
  
“Yeah.” He wrinkles his brow a little more. “My throat feels dry, I don’t know.” He swallows a few times, then chuckles. “That was...kind of weird.”  
  
“Most kinks typically are,” Brian says. He pushes the hair out of Arin’s face, petting gently, able to see the heat in Arin’s cheeks. “Would you like to try more?”  
  
“I think so?” Arin laughs again. “It was, I mean...is there more to it than that?”  
  
“It gets a little more intense. Especially if you like control being taken from you.” Brian watches Arin adjust again, getting more comfortable. “There’s a palpable rush of endorphins once you get that full breath of air again if you haven’t had it in a while. There’s the realization that you can’t breathe unless your partner decides you should and the trust that goes into that.” He moves his hand and presses his palm against the front of Arin’s throat. “There’s also another technique. You have to be a lot more careful with it, and I don’t recommend it unless you’re trying it with someone who’s experienced.”  
  
“You experienced?” Arin asks, waggling his eyebrows.  
  
Brian smirks up at him. “Would you like references?”  
  
“Absolutely.”  
  
“I’ll get them to you posthaste,” Brian drawls. He rubs his palm lightly over the swell in Arin’s throat. “You can close off the windpipe by applying pressure right here. You have to be careful, since you can actually damage someone, but it’s a quicker, more effective way to cut off the airflow entirely.”  
  
Arin’s eyelashes flutter. Brian wonders if he’s even aware that he did so. “Shit,” Arin says, soft and warm. “That, uh...would you do that for me?”  
  
“We can try it,” Brian says. “You might not be able to speak.” He takes Arin’s hand and puts it back on Brian’s shoulder. “Here, squeeze for me.”  
  
Arin squeezes hard enough that it catches Brian’s attention immediately.  
  
“Good,” Brian says. “If you need me to pull off before I choose to, squeeze and I’ll stop.”  
  
Arin nods. For once he seems to be taking something completely seriously, and Brian flashes him a smile and turns his head to kiss Arin’s wrist in reward.  
  
“Ready?” Brian asks.  
  
“Yeah,” Arin says. He tries to nod, but the pressure of Brian’s hand makes it difficult.  
  
“Here we go.”  
  
The reaction is immediate. Brian studies the way that Arin’s eyelashes flutter as Brian applies pressure, how the sound of Arin’s air intake changes, how Arin immediately digs his fingers into Brian’s shoulder before pulling off quickly, like he’s afraid of Brian thinking it was a squeeze. There’s a certain threshold that Brian pushes toward, a certain tightness of air, before he’s satisfied and simply holds and watches Arin’s expression.  
  
It’s a different game now. Brian thrives on pushing people, on trusting them enough to tell him when to stop, on them trusting him enough to get them right to the edge of their limits, and Arin’s never gone into things quietly or tamely. Arin cannonballs into things. He dunks himself in the cold pool rather than going in a toe at a time. So Brian waits. He watches the color of Arin’s skin change. He feels the shift under his hand as Arin struggles to breathe.  
  
He’s more surprised than he should be when Arin reaches down to cup himself through his shorts.  
  
Brian’s heart starts pounding the moment he realizes that Arin is getting off to this, rubbing himself intently through his clothes. He keeps track of the seconds ticking by in his head as best as he can, but realizes with a shock that Arin’s not squeezing his shoulder. He’s not tapping out. He’s gonna see it through until Brian is satisfied. So Brian pulls back when the clock goes on a little too long in his head, sees how Arin gasps for air before he sags against Brian with a whimper, feels the almost frantic breaths that Arin takes against his neck.  
  
“Holy shit,” Arin murmurs roughly, then clears his throat and swallows. “Fuck, goddamn.”  
  
“You all right?” Brian asks.  
  
Arin makes another rough sound. He leaves a few kisses on Brian’s skin before grabbing Brian’s free hand and shoving it between his legs. Fuck, he’s hard. Brian inhales sharply as he grinds the heel of his palm against Arin’s cock, letting the heady power trickle through him as Arin practically whines.  
  
“Again?” Arin asks, voice tinged with need and pleading.  
  
“Yeah?” Brian asks. “That what you want? Want me to choke you ‘til you come for me?”  
  
“Fuck,” Arin whispers. He bucks his hips against Brian’s hand. “God, yeah.”  
  
Brian feels an answering thrum in his pants, twitching and aching, as he peels Arin’s shorts and boxers down enough to let his cock bob free. Brian wraps one hand around it and one hand around Arin’s neck, feeling Arin steady himself with hands on Brian’s shoulders, and then Brian squeezes.  
  
Fuck, Brian can just imagine fucking Arin like this, Arin wheezing from his hand but letting Brian handle him, trusting Brian so innately. There’s precum to slick Brian’s moving hand, to make it all the easier to jack Arin off while he struggles to breathe, and Brian doesn’t mean to make the rough noises he does, more growling than anything, but it makes Arin’s eyes fall shut, makes him let out a single note of strangled noise before Brian’s touch cuts it off.  
  
And that’s when there’s a knock at the door.  
  
Brian pulls off immediately, letting Arin sink against him with a little cry. Arin tightens his hands in Brian’s shirt, twitching, desperate, and Brian wishes he had time to bring him back properly to the moment, that he had time to care for him. “Did you order food?” Brian asks.  
  
Arin doesn’t reply verbally, but he shakes his head.  
  
As Brian goes to move Arin to the side Arin grunts and pulls Brian with him, and Brian gently shushes him. “Just have to check the door,” Brian murmurs. “I’ll be back.”  
  
Arin whines.  
  
“I’ll be right there,” Brian says, kissing Arin’s forehead. “You’ll be able to see me. I won’t go anywhere that you can’t see.”  
  
Arin’s panting slows just enough for him to nod, for Brian to feel good about gently disentangling Arin’s hands from his shirt. There’s another knock as Brian heads toward the front door and Brian swears softly, checks through the peephole.  
  
He pauses. He steps back and frowns. And then he opens the door.  
  
It’s Danny.  
  
Danny spins around to look at Brian, immediately grinning. “Hey!” He’s flushed and his eyes look a little manic somehow, darting around, never lingering for too long. “How’s it going?”  
  
“I’m a little busy right now, Danny,” Brian says as calmly as he can. He keeps his body in between Danny and Arin, suddenly vividly aware of how Arin’s cock is hanging out, how he left Arin sprawled out on the couch.  
  
“What?” Danny wrinkles his brow, but his wide smile never vanishes. “I mean, whatever, that’s fine, I don’t have to stay long, could I just-”  
  
“No,” Brian quickly interrupts. He takes a step forward, then remembers his promise that he’d stay where Arin could see him and comes to a stop again. “No you can’t.”  
  
Danny forces a laugh. “What’s the big deal? Just wanted to come see you, man. You and Arin. Arin said that you guys were hanging out tonight, so I-I just thought I’d stop by, see if you wanted to hang together, y’know, like usual.”  
  
Hanging out. Him and Arin. Brian puts on his best teacher voice that he can. “Danny, Arin and I aren’t hanging out. We’re having a date. And we’d appreciate some privacy. We can hang out tomorrow, if you’d like, but-”  
  
“I’m busy tomorrow,” Danny says. The smile’s there, but for the first time Brian can identify the wildness in Danny’s eyes, the way he’s fidgeting with his huge hands, how he keeps shifting his weight from foot to foot. He’s a mess. And Brian really doesn’t have time to find out why, not when he left Arin such a state. “C’mon, man, just a few minutes.”  
  
Brian hears shifting behind him and he stands a little taller, moving just enough toward Danny that he can drop his voice. “If something’s wrong, I can call someone for you. Barry or Suzy, anybody. I just need a little bit of time, Danny.”  
  
“There’s nothing wrong,” Danny presses. There’s audible tension in his voice, making the words short and clipped, and something blazes up inside of Brian, alarmed. “God, dude, why can’t you just, like, let me come in for a second or whatever, it’s like, I-I don’t know what you’re trying to hide, but-”  
  
The couch squeaks behind Brian and suddenly Arin is lurching into view. “You sound scared as shit, dude,” Arin slurs.  
  
Danny stares over Brian’s shoulder and Brian turns his head just enough to see what has Danny’s eyes so wide. “Your dick’s out,” Danny says.  
  
“Yep.” Arin wraps a hand around it, cradling it.  
  
“It’s...it’s hard.”  
  
“Fuck, dude,” Arin says, looking down. “It sure is.”  
  
Danny starts fidgeting even more, raking his hands through his curls, sucking in a sharp breath. “Well, can’t you fucking put it away?” he snaps. “Like, fuck, I just, I show up to hang out or whatever and you’re trying to get me into an orgy?”  
  
“Dan,” Brian snaps back. “Absolutely nobody is inviting you into an orgy. You interrupted something and I’ve told you repeatedly that we weren’t ready to-”  
  
“Brian,” Arin says softly.  
  
There’s a long moment of silence, Brian and Dan glowering at each other, before Arin steps forward. He’s got himself put together now, at least, clothed and everything, but when he reaches for Danny’s wrist, Danny flinches. Arin isn’t fazed by it like Brian is. Just wraps his fingers around Danny’s wrist and pulls him along behind him, and Brian stares straight ahead for a long moment before he huffs and shuts the door.  
  
“Sit down,” Arin says promptly before he collapses facefirst on the couch, taking up all the room, and gently groans.  
  
Danny doesn’t sit. Danny stands. He stands and stares at Arin with his arms crossed over his chest and his jaw working. He’s refusing to look at Brian, it seems, and Brian huffs before he starts moving toward the kitchen.  
  
Brian needs the moment to center himself. He pulls down three glasses and plops some ice into them, pours some filtered water out of the pitcher in his fridge, lets his mind quiet. He feels...decidedly unstable about this. The last thing he ever wanted was for Danny to walk in on Brian doing a scene, especially with Arin, and he hasn’t made the transition back into a vanilla mindset as seamlessly as he had hoped he would. The question of why the transition is taking so long still remains. Was he protecting Arin from embarrassment or protecting himself?  
  
He hears their soft voices in the living room, pitched low enough that he can’t understand what’s being said even as much as he strains. Eavesdropping. Bad habit that he’s getting into, apparently. Brian washes his hands at the sink and takes his time peeling an orange. Fruit might not cure all wounds or anxieties, but fuck, he needs something to do with his hands, and he might as well pretend to play the perfect host.  
  
He rips the orange in two once it’s peeled, then pauses. Is he shaking? Perhaps a little. More than he should be. He probes at the sore spot in his mind that still feels unsatisfied with the evening. If he’s upset that his scene was interrupted, that’s no reason to literally shake with anger. Yes, he is allowed to be angry at Danny being so presumptuous even after Brian told him repeatedly to leave, but once again, the shaking is unwarranted.  
  
He tries to think of the last time that he chose someone over Danny.  
  
He thinks a little more.  
  
Oh.  
  
He can feel the bite of his own betrayal on the back of his tongue now. But Arin is his boyfriend. Arin deserves his attention first and foremost, and Danny needs to learn that sometimes he’s going to have to come after that. Brian probes a little harder, trying to figure out how he would react if Danny did the same to him.  
  
Ah, not well, that’s what the responding clench in his stomach says. Interesting.  
  
Any other night Brian would sit down with a notebook and absently journal about what he’s feeling, writing down hypothesis, sketching out charts and graphs to hold the emotional data that he collects, but he doesn’t have time for that. He has his boyfriend who’s possibly blissed out on the couch and his best friend who’s clearly off his game and needing something. So later. He’ll do this later.  
  
Brian makes his way to the living room, balancing the plate of oranges and the glasses of water rather spectacularly, if he does say so himself, and he feels the full force of Danny’s expression when he turns his eyes on him. “I brought food,” Brian says. “And water.”  
  
“Nice peace offering,” Arin says. His voice is still slurring a little, and every instinct in Brian’s body is to put Arin to bed and snuggle him close until he feels like himself again. Arin reaches blindly for the oranges, hand flapping through the air, and Brian catches his wrist and tucks a fat orange slice into his grip. “Thanks, bro.”  
  
Danny makes a noise and Brian turns to him, offering a glass of water that Danny hesitates to take. “What is it?” Brian asks.  
  
Danny opens his mouth, closes it, takes a sip, then answers as he stares at the ground. “Never heard anybody call their, uh, their partner ‘bro’ before, it just. Sounds a little weird.”  
  
“Because we’ve always been normal,” Arin slurs. “Yeah, that’s, makes sense.”  
  
Danny turtles up a little more, shoulders hunched, hair in his face, and Brian feels an almost immediate pull toward him, as natural as breathing. He offers Danny the plate of oranges and Danny shakes his head, turns to the side just enough to deny Brian.  
  
Brian hesitates only a few seconds before he sets the plate down again.  
  
They wait there, Arin humming softly on the couch, Danny facing the wall, Brian turned toward them both. But as uncomfortable as the air around Danny feels, he doesn’t make any move to leave. Just nurses his water silently while Brian’s sweats all over the table where it’ll no doubt irreparably stain it.  
  
Brian extends the olive branch for the second time. “I’d like it if you’d tell me what’s wrong, Danny.”  
  
“Oh, you do?” Danny asks. There’s a sharpness in his tone that Brian’s not used to. “Funny, I thought you were too busy.”  
  
Danny’s looking for a fight, and Brian feels the ache to give it to him, to bite back, but...but no. “It just so happens that I’m not busy now.”  
  
“You sure?” Danny asks. “’Cuz I can come back tomorrow if, you know, my best friends need some time alone together.”  
  
“Danny,” Brian says as softly as he can manage, and he watches Danny flinch again. “Arin and I are dating. We’re together. It just so happens that we’re gonna want some time alone together. I mean, how would you feel if I went out of my way to interrupt your dates with your girlfriends when I felt lonely?”  
  
“I didn’t say I was lonely,” Danny says so quickly that he almost interrupts Brian. He turns his head, his hair whipping around. “Did I say I was lonely?”  
  
“No, you-”  
  
“I’m just fine,” Danny insists. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I-I don’t see why you just, you keep trying to say something’s wrong with me when I’m just fucking peachy, I just, I just wanted to see if you and Arin wanted to see me and hang out, I-I don’t see why that’s weird.”  
  
“Danny.” Brian reaches out and touches his shoulders. “Stop, just breathe for a second.”  
  
Danny takes deep gasps of air. His thin shoulders shake under Brian’s hands and he keeps his head tilted down, hair hiding his face. He looks like he’s two steps away from dropping the glass of water, and Brian reaches to pluck it from his hand, but the second their fingers brush Danny drops it like Brian shocked him and jolts out of his grip. “Don’t-”  
  
“Danny-”  
  
“Stop,” Danny says. He sucks in a shaky breath and stares at Brian with wet eyes, his teeth gritted like a wild animal trying to ward him off. “Don’t touch me.”  
  
“I’m not gonna touch you,” Brian says in what he hopes is a soothing tone of voice. Adrenaline is kicking up in his stomach as he holds his empty hands up, the cool water already sinking into his socks. “Danny, can you tell me what’s wrong?”  
  
“There’s. Nothing. Wrong.” Says the man half an inch away from a panic attack. “Just d-don’t _touch_ me.”  
  
“Okay,” Brian says. He doesn’t move and neither does Danny and Brian has no fucking clue how to end this stand-off besides just waiting for Danny to give him something to go on, so they stand there, Danny gasping for air, Brian frozen. Until Arin speaks.  
  
“You’re jealous,” Arin says in a low, warm voice.  
  
Danny looks at Arin, his eyes huge, his skin going pallid.  
  
“You are,” Arin murmurs. He shifts on the couch again, leaning back against the arm of it, his eyes focusing on Danny’s. “But the thing is...” He clears his throat to shake the last of his drowsy slur. “...is why, huh?”  
  
Arin gives Danny a chance to answer, but Danny doesn’t blink. He doesn’t even breathe. He just stares.  
  
Arin rakes a hand through his hair and speaks so softly that Brian has to strain to hear. “Are you jealous about us leaving you alone...or are you jealous because you want this?”  
  
Brian turns his eyes back to Danny.  
  
“Do you want _us?_ ”  
  
And Brian gets to see Danny shrink back like he’s been shot.  
  
Oh God.  
  
“I-I’m not gay,” Danny says in a high-pitched voice.  
  
“Cool story, bro,” Arin says quietly, casually. “Guess what? Me neither?”  
  
“I-I’m not...” Danny presses a hand to his mouth to muffle a sound, then drops down to his knees, and Brian goes down too, hands reaching before he remembers to stay back, before he sees Danny’s eyes whip toward him.  
  
Fuck, how had Brian been that unaware, how hadn’t he seen, how, _how?_  
  
“It’s okay,” Brian says softly, because Danny’s not looking away from him, is holding Brian’s gaze like it’s the only tenuous connection he still has to reality. “It’s all right, Danny. Can you breathe for me? Deep breaths?” Brian begins breathing in demonstration and watches the way that Danny’s thin chest moves with him. “Good, good,” Brian says, then goes on, feeling his heart almost burst wide open for Danny.  
  
While they breathe Arin makes his way to the floor too, knee-walking forward, and Danny looks between them. Danny lifts his other hand too, covering his face, and whispers a quiet “Goddammit” just before Arin touches Danny’s thigh. And Danny leans forward with a rough sound, plunges into Arin’s arms, and starts crying against his shoulder.  
  
Brian moves forward and wraps his arms around them both, feeling his entire being ache at the sound of Danny’s sobs. As Arin pets through Danny’s hair and softly reassures him, Brian rubs his back. He doesn’t make the conscious decision to lay a soft kiss on the top of Danny’s head, but Danny cries harder at it and wraps a hand in Brian’s shirt, pulling him so close that Brian can barely breathe.  
  
“It’s okay,” Brian whispers again.  
  
“I-I don’t know what’s happening,” Danny says roughly.  
  
“I know,” Brian whispers. “I know, Danny. But it’s okay. You don’t have to figure it out right now. We’re here. Just let it out.”  
  
“We’re not going anywhere,” Arin murmurs.  
  
The ice melts on the carpet and soaks through Brian’s pants, and he doesn’t even notice.  
  
  
~~  
  
  
“All right,” Brian says when they’re all rearranged on pillows and couch cushions on the floor, the roll of toilet paper leading to a pile of discarded snot rags, the water replaced with a preemptive bottle of whiskey just in case. “Talk time?”  
  
“I hate talk time,” Danny mutters. He’s abandoned clinging to them, has his back to the couch legs, but he has one of his legs shoved out and touching Arin’s like a lifeline and that’s good enough.  
  
“Y’know what happens when you don’t have talk time?” Arin asks brightly, reaching down to squeeze Danny’s knee and make him squeak and pull back. “You show up and crash some boning ‘cuz you’ve got a lot of unresolved issues.”  
  
Danny scoffs. “Well, who else am I gonna do that with?”  
  
“Ross and Holly,” Brian intones.  
  
Danny gives him a look. “Dude.”  
  
“Dude,” Brian says back. He offers the bottle of whiskey even though he knows better and Danny waves it off, though he does push out his other leg to touch Brian’s. “Here, we’ll catch up real quick. Things we’ve established...you’re not gay.”  
  
“Correct,” Danny says quickly, letting out a sigh.  
  
“But you’re curious about something.”  
  
Danny doesn’t reply, so Arin pops in with a “Correct” that mimics Danny’s voice to a tee.  
  
“And you’re apparently jealous of us spending time together if it doesn’t involve you.”  
  
Danny tips his head back with a groan and rubs his eyes. “Yeah,” he finally whines.  
  
“So now,” Brian says, pouring a shot of whiskey into his own glass and offering it to Arin, who also declines, before he caps the bottle. “Now we’re gonna talk about this and figure out what the hell’s going on.”  
  
“Don’t wanna,” Danny says.  
  
“Don’t think Brian’s the one you should be saying that to,” Arin replies. “Like, just saying, when have you ever known the guy to not exactly be in control?”  
  
Danny grunts. “I don’t wanna hear about your kinky sex life.”  
  
“Are you sure?” Arin asks too cheerfully.  
  
Danny stays quiet. He scrubs his whole face with his hands and sighs loudly again. “No comment.”  
  
“Listen,” Brian interrupts. Arin’s a powder keg. He’ll burst wide open and take Danny down with him without even thinking in the name of growth. “We’ll start small.” He gives Arin a warning look and Arin rolls his eyes but leans back, laying on his elbows on the floor. Brian looks back at Danny, sees how Danny is slowly drawing his eyes up the length of Arin’s curvy body, looking a little guilty and a little afraid as he does so. Brian gets that. He remembers realizing he wasn’t part of the average, remembers wondering if something in him was broken, if someone was going to call him out about it. “Do you have anything you wanna ask, Danny?”  
  
Danny meets his eyes, then flushes and looks away when he realizes that Brian saw Danny eying up his boyfriend. He’s quiet for a long moment. “...why each other?” he asks, then swallows hard. “I mean, like, is there...you both went after each other and started dating, and not, like...you didn’t go after me. Was there, like...something wrong with me, or…?”  
  
“Danny,” Brian says just to call Danny’s attention back to him, red-faced and nervous as he clearly is. “How many times do you think you’ve made a point to mention around me in the history of our friendship that you’re straight?”  
  
Danny looks down, then immediately looks back up with a sharp inhale. “Arin’s never said he wasn’t straight, though. Not around me, at least.”  
  
Arin makes a soft sound, staring up at the ceiling, wiggling his bare toes thoughtfully. “I mean, y’know, like, there wasn’t reason to talk about it.”  
  
“Except around Brian?”  
  
“He never said it to me either,” Brian says. “I just assumed that he was before I asked him if he was interested in you.”  
  
Danny nods thoughtfully, then snaps his eyes up, looking like he got hit with a truck. “Do what?”  
  
“Yeah, that was a fun night,” Arin says with a grin. “Brian saying I’m interested in you, me saying Brian’s interested in you, us both realizing we were interested in each other...good times.”  
  
Danny nods again. “So you both decided you  _weren't_ interested in me,” he says quietly. He doesn’t sound disappointed. Doesn’t even sound resigned. No, he sounds like a man who’s known the truth for ages, believes in it stronger than anything he’s ever known.  
  
Except that Brian and Arin’s eyes meet. They both lift their eyebrows and try to communicate soundlessly. And Danny looks between them like it’s a tennis match that he’s suddenly painfully invested in. Brian’s the one to speak. “I think we should finish our discussion,” he says slowly before he takes a sip of his whiskey and feels the burn all the way down to his toes.  
  
“Okay,” Danny practically whispers. He sits back a little more and Arin and Brian both scoot a little closer.  
  
Brian reaches out and tangles his fingers with Arin’s, playing with them while he considers things. “Can you tell me specifically what you’re jealous of?”  
  
Danny nods toward their hands after a moment. “That. That right there.”  
  
“Mm?” Brian lifts their hands.  
  
“Yeah, like...” Danny sighs. “Every second you guys are, like, figuring more stuff out. Your relationship keeps moving forward, and I get left behind more and more. And that’s how it’s gonna go, right? Eventually you’re both gonna realize that all you need is each other, and I’m gonna be left in the dust.”  
  
“Uh,” Arin says, “I have Suzy.” He chuckles. “Dude, I don’t wanna sound like a prick or whatever, but you’re right in one thing, and that’s that you and Brian give me different shit, just like Brian and Suzy give me different shit. That’s the whole point of being polyamorous. You’re not relying on one person to be your one and only, does that make sense? Do you know how stressful that is, like, always having to be on the ball for someone so you can give them literally everything they need?”  
  
Danny blinks. “I’ve never thought of it that way,” he says slowly.  
  
“That’s because you’re monogamous,” Arin says, then pauses. “Or so I thought.”  
  
Same, Brian thinks. He studies Arin for a moment, squeezing his hand, before he looks back at Danny. “You’ve never been my only friend,” Brian points out. “You’ve been my best friend, yeah, but you haven’t even been my _only_ best friend sometimes. I don’t come to you for everything. I don’t call you every time I have an issue. Sometimes I figure it out on my own, and sometimes I go to somebody else. Hell, I’ve had partners during my friendship with you, and that’s never-”  
  
“You’ve dated people while we were friends?” Danny asks, sitting a little taller.  
  
Brian blinks. “Yes?”  
  
“How’d I never know that?” Danny squeaks.  
  
“Uh...” Brian wrinkles his brow. “You were...not...paying attention?”  
  
“I swear to God, dude, I don’t remember you introducing me to a single...uh, boyfriend.”  
  
“That’s because I didn’t?” Brian chuckles. “No, I just texted people constantly, or kept getting up to leave the room to take a phone call, or bought little trinkets and stuffed animals and flowers and stuff, and you never noticed.”  
  
Danny studies him, his eyes far away, before he nods. “That...okay, yeah, that makes sense.”  
  
“And you never knew,” Brian adds, “because nothing ever changed in our friendship. I was never pushing you away. I just handled both relationships like a big boy.”  
  
“Relationships?” Danny asks, almost squeaking again. It’s more than a little amusing how he responds to almost every single statement like a shocking cliffhanger, and Brian tries to keep himself from grinning.  
  
Brian sips his whiskey again just to watch Danny keep staring at him with those huge, sparkling eyes, then sighs after he swallows. “Relationships,” he says slowly. “My romantic relationship with them and my platonic relationship with you.”  
  
Danny relaxes again. “Oh.”  
  
“So are you monogamous?” Arin asks right out. Never satisfied until he gets the clearest answer he’s looking for, is he?  
  
Danny wrinkles his brow and plays with his own hair. “I mean, like, I guess? Or, maybe not?”  
  
“Is it that hard?” Brian asks, looking at Arin.  
  
“It’s a learning curve,” Arin says, then silences Brian by kissing his knuckles. “Give him a second.”  
  
“Like...” Danny reaches to rub his chin. “Okay, what’s it mean when you don’t have like a straight up girlfriend, but you date around? Is that polyamorous?”  
  
“It can be,” Arin says slowly. “If you personally wanna call it that. But I’m pretty sure most people would just call that playing the field, as long as everybody knew nothing was serious.”  
  
“So what’s polyamory, then?” Danny asks.  
  
“Fuck, dude.” Arin chuckles as he rakes the hair out of his face. “Depends on who you ask. There’s a whole mess of terms. I could give you a whole lecture on them. Relationship anarchy, swinging, polyamory, it all falls under this tree that’s called ‘ethical nonmonogamy,’ right? It’s ethical because everybody knows about it. If not everybody knew, it’d be cheating, and then it’d be unethical, yeah? You with me?”  
  
“I’m with you.”  
  
“So okay, polyamory is normally, like, it’s sort of been decided that it’s based more on the relationship side of things. If you’re swinging, it’s sort of just a couple going out and fucking people without any strings attached, and if you’re doing the whole ‘relationship anarchy’ thing it’s when you don’t put any terms on anything you do at all, like, you don’t have a wife, you don’t have partners, you don’t have flings, it’s just, you do what you wanna do as long as it feels right, and then you back out. It’s easier for some people.”  
  
“Uh-huh.” Danny looks a little like he wishes he was taking notes and Brian’s pretty sure he doesn’t look much different, really. Arin wasn’t lying about it being a lecture, but Brian’s old hat at those. He loves them. “But polyamory isn’t like that?”  
  
“Polyamory’s basically just, like...” Arin considers, biting his tongue. “...like, you’re not just in it for the sex. You’re not in it to have temporary flings. You legit wanna have relationships with multiple people, like, meaningful and strong and long-lasting relationships. So that’s what you look for.”  
  
“That’s what _you_ look for?” Danny asks.  
  
“Yep.” He shrugs. “I’ve got a big heart to go with this big dick.”  
  
“Arin, please,” Brian says mildly, “if we’re gonna start bragging here, then you and me both know that mine-”  
  
“Anyway,” Arin interrupts cheerfully, high-pitched, moving to put a hand over Brian’s mouth that Brian kisses immediately. “Terms can mean different things for everybody and I’m sure as hell not saying that I’m an expert, but yeah, that’s what I think polyamory is about.” He shrugs. “I’m not asking if you’re polyamorous, though, just if you’re monogamous or nonmonogamous.”  
  
“God, I don’t fucking know,” Danny says. He huffs and eyes the bottle of whiskey, but when Brian offers it he shakes his head again. Damn stomach issues. Brian would rather not be the only one getting buzzed here, he thinks as he self-sabotages by drinking again. “Like, it’s always been stressful for me to think about being that one and only thing for a girl, and I guess that’s why I never really let myself get tied down for too long, but, like, is that a lifestyle thing or is that just me being immature and not knowing how to settle yet?” he asks with a laugh. It’s the most natural sounding laugh that Brian’s heard from him all night, and something he didn’t even realize was tense gets eased inside of him.  
  
Arin shrugs. “That’s something for you to figure out, dude. Not me.”  
  
“Great.” Danny collapses against the legs of the couch again, arms strewn across the length of the cushionless frame. “We all know how good I am at figuring things out.”  
  
Brian decides he’s been quiet for too long. “I think you’re fantastic at figuring things out.”  
  
Danny laughs immediately.  
  
“I’m serious,” Brian says. He knows he’s dry as hell all the time, but he didn’t realize it might be that difficult to tell the difference. Danny goes quiet. “You figured out what career you wanted pretty early on. You figured out how to survive and get by until you could make a life out of it. You got yourself into entertainment at places like Polaris until you could get where you wanted to go. You figured out how to control your own depression. You figured out how to build lifelong friendships and partnerships that were more fulfilling than you could’ve imagined. Like, fuck, Danny, you’ve figured things out perfectly for a while now. What’s gonna stop you from figuring this out?”  
  
Danny stares up at the ceiling and they all go quiet. Brian takes another sip of whiskey just to make sure that he’s in fact still awake, that he isn’t dreaming this whole thing, and when Danny heaves a dramatic sigh Brian feels a warmth and fondness inside of him that is so second nature he has to force himself to recognize it. Of course. God, of course.  
  
“I watched gay porn for the first time the other day,” Danny finally says.  
  
Brian spits out his mouthful of whiskey, helpfully aiming for the glass, and Arin promptly loses his shit. Arin falls over from how hard he’s laughing and Brian coughs, trying to keep from choking, as Danny looks at them with a grin. “Oh,” Brian finally croaks, “you don’t say.”  
  
“Yeah!” Danny has to practically shout to be heard over Arin’s laughter. “It was a science experiment, okay, like, fuck!”  
  
Brian reaches blindly over to touch Arin, ends up plastering his hand against Arin’s face, and Arin rolls over onto his belly to muffle his giggles, holding Brian’s hand to his chest. “Well.” Brian clears his throat. He can feel the burn through his entire nervous system, fucking Christ. “What, uh, did you think of it?”  
  
“Boring,” Danny says. “Boring as shit. Like, it was pretty much just stick Tab A into Slot B for a good thirty minutes, like, how boring is that? Do you not have foreplay?”  
  
Arin peeks out from the carpet and Brian quirks a brow and that’s enough to make Arin snort and bury his face in the carpet instead. “Because mainstream pornography is perfect at showing foreplay,” Brian says dryly, “regardless of the sexuality presented.”  
  
“Just...okay, whatever, it was just boring.” Danny scoffs and gives Arin a look, then covers his mouth to hide giggles of his own.  
  
“So what if it wasn’t?” Brian asks. He lets the statement sit in the air as he sips his whiskey again. Better. Much better. “What if you experienced something a little more true to life to see how you reacted to it?”  
  
Danny stares at him, brown eyes so soft and curious, and Brian feels the slow burn of the alcohol pressing through his veins, paired with the tingling electricity of suggestion. “...are you...propositioning me?”  
  
“Not necessarily,” Brian says as he tugs Arin closer by the hand, until Arin’s head is resting on his thigh. “Just saying that maybe if you saw something a little less mainstream, you might find it a little more intriguing.”  
  
“Oh,” Danny says softly. Any other day, any other time, Brian would expect Danny to throw his arms in the air and run as fast as he could, leaving a hole in the wall that perfectly matched his body shape. But instead Danny is considering the idea. Danny’s looking between them and shifting on the cushions a few times, like maybe he’s regretting wearing his usual tight jeans to come and ambush them. “...you...want me to watch you and Arin.”  
  
Arin immediately makes a sound, so soft that Brian doubts even Danny could hear it, but Brian can identify it immediately. Curiosity. Intrigue. He can practically read Arin’s mind, can nearly watch the slideshow of their first sexual encounter, dangerously in public. Brian had already wondered just an hour before how Arin would respond to getting off in a room full of strangers, just like the parties Brian used to frequent. Suddenly he’s wondering how Arin would enjoy getting off in front of his best friend instead.  
  
But maybe that’s too much to suggest, too much to push. Maybe they need to take it slowly. Leave something hidden, something to play with later on.  
  
Fuck, how much of this is the whiskey and how much of it is Brian acknowledging things that have always been there but that he buried so deeply?  
  
“Just watching us kiss,” Brian finally says as he holds Arin’s eyes and tries to read them. Arin certainly isn’t shaking his head no. “That’s all. Just us making out, maybe touching each other over our clothes. No getting off. Nothing overly suggestive. Just to test the waters, so to speak.”  
  
Danny lets out a shaky breath, one that’s quiet enough that Brian barely catches it. “That...that’s a possibility.”  
  
Brian looks at him and feels the immediate shockwave that explodes between their gazes. “We could do that right now.”  
  
Danny reaches for his hair, then his shirt, then his own hands, fidgety and nervous. There’s a war going on behind his eyes as he tries to catch his breath, his lips parted like he’s a second away from turning it down, from getting out with questions still unspoken and his sexuality still intact. He reaches for the bottle of whiskey and holds it, studying the label, watching how it trembles in his hands. “Yeah,” he finally murmurs.  
  
“Yeah?” Brian asks as Arin quickly sits up.  
  
“Do it,” Danny says, then swallows hard. “Please.”  
  
Arin crawls straight into Brian’s lap and kisses him. No hesitation, no warning, just a sudden attack, and Brian rocks back a little from the force of his kiss, has to wrap an arm around Arin and use the weight of his body to correct their position so Brian doesn’t fall and eat shit. Brian reaches blindly to put his glass of whiskey on the coffee table and feels the electric shock of Danny taking it from him, of their fingers brushing, and Brian exhales sharply against Arin’s mouth.  
  
There’s still simmering energy from before, from Arin’s throat under his hand, and Brian’s helpless to stop it. It’s only been stirred up from Danny’s eyes, Danny’s tentative acceptance, Danny’s sharp inhale as Brian tilts his head to slide his tongue into Arin’s mouth, and it’s not getting any calmer. Brian locks his arms around Arin’s waist. Arin is so soft for him, so warm. Absolutely intoxicating.  
  
Arin hums against his mouth, a low, warm sound that resonates deep inside of Brian, and Brian presses his fingers into Arin’s sides and feels them pillow in, possessive and tight. Just the taste of him alone is enough to satisfy Brian right now. He rocks up against Arin and swallows the moan that he gets in return.  
  
There’s a shift beside him and Brian immediately pulls back to see Danny standing, but Danny waves at him with the bottle. “No, don’t, just...I-I’d like it if…please go on,” he stammers out, flushed and flustered, and Brian holds Danny’s eyes as he kisses Arin again, slow and sure, watching Danny walk toward the kitchen. Danny disappears inside as Brian eases his hands down Arin’s waist, over his ass, and Brian squeezes just to hear Arin whine again.  
  
Too much? Not what Danny was expecting?  
  
But no, Danny appears in the doorframe of the kitchen, leaning back into it so he’s almost hidden in the shadows. Oh, so that’s his game. He wants to watch without being seen. Brian pulls Arin tighter against him and feels Arin grab fistfuls of his shirt, pulling at it like he’d like nothing better than to get it off.  
  
Another time, maybe, if Danny’s going to watch so hungrily.  
  
Brian tips Arin into the little pillow nest they’d all built and presses against him. His eyelashes flutter as he feels his body sink against Arin’s, hot and heavy and everything he wants in this world.  
  
Everything except...maybe one thing.  
  
Arin breaks the kiss with a sharp groan, and Brian lets him, goes to bite at his neck instead as he slowly moves his hips against Arin’s, fueled by whiskey and heat. “Dan,” Arin murmurs, almost a whine, and when Brian opens his eyes he sees Arin reaching above his head, fingers wiggling for Danny. “Please.”  
  
Brian flicks his eyes up and sees how Danny tenses. He’s hard in his pants. It’s not the first time that Brian imagines getting his mouth around Danny’s cock, but it’s the first time he lets the fantasy roll absently in the back of his head as he grinds, pressing his and Arin’s cocks against each other through their jeans. He gives a particularly hard buck just as he bites down hard, just enough to make Arin cry out and twitch under him, and then he runs his tongue over the bite to soothe it.  
  
Danny takes a careful step forward, and that alone is enough to send a pleasant tingle down Brian’s back. Fuck, this is happening. It’s really happening. It’s-  
  
“Stop,” Danny says.  
  
Brian springs back onto his haunches and Arin rolls onto his tummy, both of them alert. “You okay?” Brian asks.  
  
“Yeah, I-I, I’m very...” Danny trails off, then looks down and giggles, gesturing toward his cock. “Okay, listen, I am at attention, but I just, uh. I don’t...I need time to think? If that makes sense?”  
  
“What,” Arin says dryly, “you don’t wanna rub your dick against another dude’s dick for the first time an hour after you had your gay panic? You sure? You really sure?”  
  
“Shut up,” Danny says, laughing. He’s bright red and sheepish, and the way he meets Brian’s eyes is so tentative, like he’s worried that Brian will judge him for wanting to think about things.  
  
Right, Brian who doesn’t do one night stands, he’ll totally and definitely judge him for wanting time to figure things out, of course.  
  
“Take your time, Danny,” Brian says. “This isn’t...a requirement. You can still be my bitch even if you don’t want a hot dicking.”  
  
“Brian,” Danny whines as he covers his face and laughs again. “Oh God. Okay. I’m leaving. I’m leaving and I’ll see you guys at the office tomorrow, and...and I’ll think. I promise. I won’t make you wait.”  
  
“I’m serious,” Brian says. “Take your time.”  
  
“Okay.” Danny smiles at them, bright and sunny, and backs toward the door. “Don’t, uh. Don’t let me interrupt you, please, get your hot dicking.”  
  
“Oh, we will,” Arin says as he reaches behind him to drag Brian down on top of him.  
  
Danny’s laugh bubbles down the sidewalk even after the door is shut, sweet and melodic.  
  
Brian lays there flush against Arin, but the last thing he’s thinking about is sex. He tucks his arms around him again and nuzzles at the back of his neck with a little sigh. “So. Did we both just...accidentally spring into another relationship?”  
  
“You like him, right?” Arin asks.  
  
“Dude,” Brian says with a chuckle. “Yeah, I like him.”  
  
“Me too,” Arin says. “So we can figure it out once he tells us how he feels.”  
  
Brian sighs against him and lays a few sweet, lazy kisses on his neck. “I mean, I guess it’d be convenient,” Brian says dryly. “We finally get to live the mythical torrid band life with Starbomb and have a lot of orgies when we’re on tour.”  
  
“Does a threesome count as an orgy?” Arin asks, grinning.  
  
“Eh.” Brian shrugs. “We can pull Barry and Ross into it, that’s fine.”  
  
“What about Suzy?” Arin asks.  
  
Brian considers it for only a few seconds before he shrugs again. “If she’d like.”  
  
Arin shifts to see him over his shoulder. “Really?”  
  
“Wouldn’t be the first vagina I’ve played with.”  
  
Arin rolls over to face Brian and pulls him down for a kiss. “One step at at time, huh?” he asks.  
  
“Mmm.” Brian kisses him a little deeper. “Should the next step involve messy sex on my couch cushions and pillows?”  
  
“Absolutely,” Arin says with a wicked smirk just before their lips meet again.


End file.
